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UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 



BY 



LYDIA ETHEL F. PAINTER 









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Copyright, 1910 

by 
Kenyon V. Painter 



S)Ci,A28G(;Vi7 



FOREWORD 

When I am asked, as. I am sure to be, why I 
have written this Httle book about a land of which 
scribes, poets, hi^orians and archaeologies have left no 
thought unsaid, no ^one of research unturned, what 
answer shall I make? All the splendid work of these 
are as familiar to the world as Egypt's ruins to the 
sun; what answer? 

It was a poor dwarf who loved a fine lady so well 

that one day, as he touched the tips of her fingers, he 

told her his love, and when treated in a summary fashion 

for his temerity he amswered his que^ioners "why" with 

the whole simple truth — 

"Because, I love her!" 

a truth that has countless times been accepted as good 

excuse for ju^ such temerity as that of the dwarf's — and 

mine; and if any find it an insufficient excuse for my 

touch of Egypt's finger tips, my confessions of a very real 

love for her, let them go for a winter's holiday to the 

Land of the Nile and there give themselves over to the 

inspirations of her skies. 

L. E. F. P. ^ 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Facing 
Pacu-: 



V 



ly 



Portrait, Lydia Ethel F. Painter - - Frontispiece ^ 

The Pyramids 1 '^ 

The Nile - - - 2^ 

Sail Boats on the Nile 4 ■" 

The Black Glittering Rocks of the Nile - - 6 «^ 

Roman Ruins— Nile at Assuan 8 

The Pyramids in the Di^ance - - - - 11*^ 

Shepherd and Sheep 12^ 

The Sphinx and the Great Pyramid - - - 17 

Always Into Futurity 18' 

The White Winged Birds of the Nile - - 23 ^ 

Obelisk at HeliopoHs 24 '^ 

Statue of Ti — In the Museum of Gizeh - - 28 ^ 

Tai et Naia — Sakkara — Twentieth Dyna^y - - 30 "^ 

Queen Makari and God Horus - - - - 35 i^ 

Queen Makari and Boat of the Dead - - - 37"^ 

Musicians and Dancers 39"^ 

Temple of Luxor 47*^ 

Amenhetep III Driving Chariot - - - - 49 

Interior of the Temple of Luxor — Statue of Rameses II 50 

Kamak — Sphinx Avenue and the Theban Plain - 52 

One of the Four Gates of Kamak - - - - 55"^ 

Karnak — Pylon and Sphinxes - - - 56 ^^ 



Kamak— Great Hall and Hatasu's Obelisk - - 58"^ 
Kamak 60 > 

Kamak— Sphinx Avenue 62 

Temple of Khons — Theban Plain - - - 65^ 

Colossi of Memnon 67 ^ 

The Ramesseum 68 ^ 

The Valley of the Tombs of the Kings - - - 73 -^ 
The Creaking Water Wheels - - - - 76 
The Temple of Der-el-Bahari — Theban Plain - - 78 
Hathor— Found Near the Temple of Der-el-Bahari - 79 
The Ramesseum — The Fallen Statue of Rameses 

the Great 80 

Panorama of Medinet Abu Temple - - - 82 
Temple of Medinet Abu (Interior) - - - - 85 

Temple of Edfu 87 

Temple of Kom Ombos - - - - - 90 

Temple of Isis — Philae 95 

Islands and Palms Submerged 96 

Through the Portal of the Temple of Isis— Philae 98' 

The Kiosk 100 

Pharaoh's Throne (Great Rock) - - - - 1 05' 
Rock Temple of Abu Simbal (Exterior) - - - 106 
Rock Temple of Abu Simbal (Interior) - - 1 08 • 
The River's Unhewn Temples — Near Assuan - - 1 1 0' 

Kiosk-Philae- Adieu 113 

Over the Golden Sands in Golden Nubia They 

March 114^ 

Sugar Cane Carriers — The Desert - - - - 1 1 6 

Temple of Isis— Philae 118 

Cleopatra 1 20 



CONTENTS 

The Nile 1 

The Pyramids 11 

The Sphinx 17 

From Temple to Temple - - - - - 23 

Abydos 35 

Temple of Hathor 41 

The Temple of Luxor 47 

Kamak and the Theban Plain - - - - 55 

The Colossi of Memnon - - - - - 67 

The Valley of the Tombs of the Kings - - 73 

Esna — EAiu — Kom Ombos - - - - 87 

Philas 95 

The Rock Temples of Abu Simbal - - - 105 

Adieu 113 

APPENDIX 

The Poem of Pentaur 125 

Chronological Table 137 



Of this edition of Under Egypt's Skies, 
written by Lydia Ethel F. Painter, two 
hundred and fifty copies were privately 
printed for her son Kenyon V. Painter, 
and of them this is number / / ^ 



THE NILE 




THE NILE 

T is easy to become an enthusia^ic devotee at 
the shrines of the centuries-gone, and doubtless 
the traveler's experiences are in every land 
beauty-enhanced by his imaginative ability 
to reconSrud the broken, the defaced, to 
raise them up from Time's disgrace and vv^rap them round 
with an ideal grace. If it is to Egypt the seeker of these 
shrines takes his way, he will everywhere feel the 
atmosphere of "a mighty pa^" enveloping him, everywhere 
the hi^ory of that paft confronting him. 

In marvelous attitudes of wonder and intereS and 
beauty ^and the roofless temple walls, the heaven-high 
pyramids, the hieroglyphiced obelisks; and none of these 
fit into the world's uniform niches of wonders. In 
colossal proportions they rise on the confines of a great 
desert, have the flow of a great river washing their 
base, and the rainless blue of earth's moS splendid skies 
to preserve them. The shrines of Egypt lie along the 
one great artery of her life, 

The Nile, 
the charm of which is not easily defined. 

"It flows through old, hushed Egypt and its sands 
Like some grave mighty thought treading a dream. " 

I 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

There is no que^ion as to what lends itself to the 
enhancement of the beauty of the rivers of the green 
world. The Tiber, the Rhine, and the Tweed break 
through and make piduresque the fore^-crowned hills of 
their countries. Poets and Nature-lovers have sung of 
their individual charms, have hung their ruined caSle 
walls with perennial romantic legend, and their hi^orians 
have made record of wars that dyed their waters 
crimson. Nor is there queftion wherein lies the charm 
of the countless small rivers of the world, that leading 
through meadow and wildwood decoy us into haunts 
where the little folk of the wilderness make the " Paradise 
enow." These all bear on their flood an aroma of a 
paft familiar in kinship. But how define the allurements 
of Egypt's river, coming from its my^erious source 
without any weave of Nature's familiar charms about 
it; flowing murmurless through desert sands paS treeless 
heights; murmerless and mirthless its more than thousand 
miles to the sea? How define the curious and wholly 
my^erious charm of Egypt's river? It is the sky, the 
sun, the sands and the atmosphere that mufl answer; they 
are the wonder workers in the land of the Nile, they 
the achievers of a beauty unique and incomparable, the 
transmuters of the day's splendors from one phase of 
glory to another. One other ally only have these, that 
triumph of green which, down at the delta, begins with 
a wide spread to EaS and We^ and gradually narrowing 
accompanies the Nile far into the South, everywhere a 
2 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

triumph of color, everywhere fresher than the green 
of any other land, everywhere its living emerald outlining 
the dull, solemn river's flow. If a bird's-eye view could 
be had of this thousand miles of pyramidal green biseded 
by the tiny water-ways that keep its life fresh, its edges 
seamed and marked by the spurs from the in-running 
hills, its green varied only by the shifting cloud 
shadows, that view would help the Nile to voice its 
centuries-old Sory of wonder and of charm. Back from 
the river, beyond the green of the fertile lands, lie the 
golden sphinx-like hills, — these that make a background for 
temples, a hiding place for tombs, Egj^st's imperishable 
mile-ilones along her life- way. So closely neighbored 
is the green and gold of the Nile land that, at beil, the 
fields look not greater than so many unrolled prayer rugs 
into whose cool freshness the children of the soil press 
their sweating brows, their lips repeating the cry of their 
fathers'-" Allah!" "Allah!" 

Along the Nile between Cairo and Assuan there is 
a monotony of ^eepish shelving banks with a level of 
maize and clover, of doora, palm groves and mud villages; of 
waterwheels turned by blind-folded oxen, of shaduf 
men, models in bronze they might be, tossing the water 
from level to level; while again^ the sky and beyond all 
these there crosses the plain and skirts the hills the 
ever piduresque camel trains. 

However unattradive, ^rangely out of date these 
creatures look in other lands, in Egypt they have a 

3 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

lineage, have centuries of ance^ors that were sovereigns 
of desert and plain. How well they seem to know it 
and show it; for whether they are swinging along with 
unbridled ease or swaying beneath burdens, theirs is the 
manner of impatient patience, a certain lofty haughtiness 
that agrees wondrous well with their makers' proud 
claim "from Pharaoh descended are we." 

It is slowly that the features of the Nile's banks 
change and yet long before the thousand miles of voyaging 
is finished the change is so complete that only the 
ever-lessening green of the fields, the faithful palms, and 
the women with their water jars remain in likeness. A 
lovely pidture these women make coming and going 
between their homes and the river, bearing in classic 
poise upon their heads or shoulders the sun-baked water 
jars. With movement as pidturesquely graceful as 
the coarse blue garment that falls loosely to their 
feet, these women go more than ankle deep into the 
river to fill their jars; each helps each to lift them, each 
follows each in slow defile through the clover paths and 
feathery tamarisk. Much gentleness of movement, much 
quietness of speech seem natural to the women of 
Egypt. Why? These who come and go are young, and 
are living under skies that are an inspiration and a joy to 
older hearts than theirs. Is it that the Mohammedan 
veil has the power to suppress the spirit as well as 
conceal the features? The unveiled woman, from her 
dahabeyah's deck, looks at and loves the pidture; and if 
4 




.v« 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

she wonders why these daughters of the Nile so long 
forego that dowery of freedom, which is the Chri^ian 
woman's boa^, she is yet glad, — oh, selfish lover of the 
piduresque — that the Nile has not lo^ this 

"type 
Of life — 'twixt blue and blue" — 
It is when the low banks of the river begin to be broken 
by sandstone ledges and these rise into semi-mountainous 
cliffs that the glowing sands of the desert come gloriously into 
the picfture. Findmg lodgment among the ^ony ledges 
they end in overlaying them with golden drifts deep and 
billowy, smooth and fine as wind-swept snow. The 
beauty of the hills of the green world has its rival in the 
beauty of these golden hills of Egypt. Of kith and 
kin are these golden hills to the great Saharah, have 
come from it on the wings of that wind which, with 
burning fervor sings always its inimitable love song, — 
"From the desert I come to thee" 
***** nor 
will cease to sing it, neither cease to pile its gold into 
these glowing mountain heights, 

"'Til the sun grows cold. 

And the ^ars are old. 

And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!" 

A splendid heritage are these hills of gold to the 

old river, no other compares to it. Nearing Nubia a 

new beauty emerges from the gray water but the hills 

of gold remain. Black gli^ening rocks begin to lift 

5 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

themselves from the Nile's bed, introducing a sort of 
rock-splendor, which grows and greatens, and culminates 
in utmoil arti^ic grace about the long, sinewy island of 
Elephantine. 

Islanded mid-^ream, piled into splendid heights at 
the desert's edge these unhewn colossi make an almoft 
sublime feature, a ^atuesque sort of grandeur that is not 
equaled elsewhere on the Nile until there comes into 
view the mountainous rock ramparts that close in and 
about Abu Simbal. 

Before Science caught the Nile in its clutches at 
the Firft Cataradt, every lover of Egypt worshipped at 
the shrine of beautiful Philae. What now? What but 
mourn the forever perished features of 

"A queen that out-luitered every other!" 
It was when science tied together the Eaft and Weft 
banks with a gigantic knot of gray ftone and fteel that 
the wild, free rush of the waters was tamed, their 
joyousness ended, and like a thing in disgrace they 
recoiled and spoiled the beauty of idealic Philae. Alas! 

Beyond the Great Dam the cliffs, and mountainous 
heights grow in ftrength and boldness, advance to the 
river's very edge, increase in height, show openings into 
valleys attradive or desolate according to atmospheric 
effeds, these ever marvelous effeds of light and 
shadow. And these effeds do not belong to the day's 
light only or pass with the sun's going, for the moonlight 
is magical with its half-light; white, snow-Uke, changing 
6 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

wholly the day's panorama by giving to it that smooth 
pure enamel-like glaze which transforms the black beauty 
of the granite rocks to a dew-like whiteness. 

With the changes in the natural features of the 
river, this transformation that comes with the passing of 
the day's light might be compared to that gentler 
countenance in the human that radiates from an 
awakened spirit. Certainly so supreme is the charm of 
the Egyptian night that it is a thing quite apart from the 
glory of the day. The Sun-god in his flaming morning 
chariot may drive the ^ar boats to their unseen 
harbors, but night by night they float back on to their 
blue sea again making perfed the calm and the softness 
and the sweet my^ery of the Egyptian night. 

It is part of the my^ery of these half-light 
transformations that broken columns and pylons are 
re^ored, the dethroned lifted up and the whole advance 
and recede of the brown, golden hills topped. In the 
uttermo^ silence they fall asleep in the lap of the desert 
plain. Somewhere among these sleeping hills, somewhere 
in the rock-^rewn channel of the river mu^ be hidden 
away, some long-sought chronicles — carved by the Nile 
god's hands. When found will they reach back more 
than the four thousand years whose chronicles we read 
with charm and wonder throughout the day-by-day on 
the Nile? 

It is worth much more than the climb to one of 
the rocky heights that come close to the Nile in 

7 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

Upper Egypt, to there watch the day wake from its 
solemn desert-night. It may prove to be a fteepish 
climb, for these mountains are rugged with ^one and 
sand interspersed, but the height once gained there 
Wretches a panorama such as imagination may not 
rival. "Precipitation," says an Arab proverb, "is from 
Satan, but patience is the key of contentment." There 
was no precipitation with Nature when with infinite 
patience she worked out for the Arab that splendid 
chain upon chain of hills that Wretches illimitably away 
to meet the morning sun of Lybia. These hills look 
to have been rolled by the winds through the deep 
brown sands, and doubled back and forth upon themselves 
like cre^s of golden waves, then suddenly transfixed in 
that my^ery which gives to tribe and tribe an interlocked 
Sronghold to which the marauding world may not 
penetrate. 

In the early morning light this va^ mountainous 
plain awakens slowly, slowly arises from its couch 
of sand, slowly are the broken features of the dull 
rock-ledges made visible through the atmosphere's soft 
haze. 

Far away where the sky and desert meet there 
comes from between them a pale pink light that very 
gently floats out, spreads as it rises until it is caught and 
shifted from ledge to ledge, spreads over the somberer 
valleys and, by some Grange necromancy, drawn down 
into them to come forth again in a new my^ery of 
8 



■ Jl:^ '' ;:F." "g^; 




UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

color; violet, light, dark, — transfused with pink, with 
amber, — rich, mellow, all-enchanting until 
"Day! 

Fa^er and more fa^, 
O'er night's brim, day boils at la^; 
Boils pure gold, — * * * 
* * one wavelet, then another, curled 
Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed. 
Rose, reddened, and in its seething brea^ 
Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then over-flowed 
the world." 
***** 

It is morning. The silent silence of the Egyptian 
night is done until "To-night" again! 

And so it is the whole Nile journey through, whether 
the desert hills are lo^ at evening in the white veiling 
light, or with the sun rise in triumph, there is always 
upon them the same witchery of light and shadow, of 
softness and freshness. Magic spells are ca^ over 
dull desert di^ances, desert wa^es wear a prismatic 
glow. Everywhere is an overflow of gold, a merging 
of criihsons and purples, of browns and blues, and the 
play of every dye of the bow through the silvery 
atmosphere completes the beauty mask. 

It would be an arti^ with a tremendous belief in 
his art who would essay to paint a pidure as daring in 
sapphire and turquoise and gold as is the light, morning 
and night, that falls from Egypt's skies. The very air 

9 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

is suffused with the not-to-be-reproduced color, and the 
imagination could create no ideal that is not out-done 
by the real in a land where no hindrance is to the 
sun's giving effeds as manifold as magnificent. Every 
day he mounts a throne out-lu^ering every other; every 
day dispenses a light and warmth the quality of which 
permeates the dry pure air without eliminating its 
freshness, and night by night quits his throne with an 
entourage of splendor that leaves the heavens 
"Enwrought with golden and silver light; 
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths 
Of night and light and the half light." 
***** 

The end of one day in the land of the Nile 
presages what the beginning of another is to be. Beauty 
and splendor fares forth every day. Nature is 
never cowering before impending ^orms, no day's 
clouds hold cavernous depths of darkness but send out 
between fold and fold fleecy cloudlets that become 
flamelets in their passing, and make all between the 
blue above and the gold beneath a very license of 
color! There is maize and topaz, saffron and 
orange, and in over-splendor to them all, those radiant 
purples that never lose their radiance, however pale 
and soft and mi^y; a very wonder-veil of beauty from 
Egypt's skies. 



10 



THE PYRAMIDS 




#^' 





THE PYRAMIDS 

VISIT to the Pyramids of Gizeh exercises the 
magic of its own peculiar spell. There 
they Sand those five thousand year old 
wonders, solemn, silent, familiar, unfamiliar; — 
Sand in colossal proportions undiminished, with 
a majeSy unsurpassed, their supremacy among pyramids 
unrivaled, now as always of the world's marvels. Nature 
has not written these colossal monuments over with grace 
notes, nor sent tender vines and gentle blooming things 
to cover their scarred and wounded sides. No bird 
circles in song about their high Sone terraces, nor do 
trees or verdant hills gather about them to break their 
sharp cut lines againS a limitless Sretch of sky. Softness 
and gentleness is not within their deSiny, in the Sars it 
was not so written, but the mySerious life of them goes 
on, — confronting on the one side a great silent desert 
world, on the other a greater noise-laden world of 
traffic; witness bearers they to both. 

It was with the coming in of the Ancient Empire 
(2500-2200 B. C.) that hiSory began a record of the 
powerful monarchs of the fourth dynaSy; Zoser, of the 
third d3maily, had already led the way in pyramid 

11 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

building and left behind him the Step Pyramid at 
Sakkara. Snofru came to the throne with the fourth 
dynafty and built two pyramids, that of Medum and 
the great pyramid at Dashur, but he was to be followed 
by three greater builders — Cheops (Khufu), Khephren 
(Khafre) and Mencheres (Menkewre) — the builders of 
the three great Pyramids of Gizeh. 

Que^ions many have been asked and answers many 
made as to why these great monuments were built, and 
hi^ory has recorded the life of them. However the 
ponderous ^ones may have been cemented together with 
the very blood of the toiling slaves who laid them, there 
is no smaller ^ain of it now upon the whiteness that 
bums and gli^ens in the sunlight, or gleams with a 
snow-like softness in the light of the moon. 

Whether "it pays" the visitor to enter and to make 
the ascent of the Great Pyramid, is a que^ion not 
answered by visitors alike. Work is to be done in the 
accomplishment of either; but the visitor can hardly 
know the meaning of a visit to the Pyramids unless 
he achieves both the entrance to, and the ascent 
of, Cheops. There is Egyptian darkness and rifling 
air to be met in the narrow passageway and ^eep 
incline that leads from the small opening on Cheops' 
side to the dark tomb-chamber at the very heart, and 
a strain of muscle in the climb up the va^, rugged 
sides to that high top from whence earth seems to sink 
away and an endless expanse of sky draws near; but to 
12 





1&^ 




> 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

attain to this "glorious Place of Khufu" is to get a good 
idea of the position of some of Egypt's mile-^ones, pa^ 
and present, as they lie scattered near and far on the 
desert plain. 

Memphis — all that is left of her — is quietly sleeping 
under a di^ant canopy of palms, while between her 
and Cheops are ranged about the si^er groups of 
Zawiyet-El-Argan, of Abusir, of Sakkara, of 
Dashur and of Abu Roash; all of these held safe 
and fa^ in their sand chains are witness bearers to the 
once really great Necropolis of Memphis. Did this 
group of pyramids ^and on the plains of Gizeh their 
size would seem less important, and in size they 
would, by comparison, be less important, but off 
there where they measure their dimensions again^ the 
ru^y gold of sand hillocks, or loom up in shadowy 
opalescent masses againS the now softly, now brilliantly 
glowing sky, they look as important in size as they 
are venerable with age. 

For near seven hundred years had the purple mi^s 
fallen like a royal mantle about the six ^ony terraces of 
King Alta's pyramid at Sakkara before the "eternal 
house" in the heart of the Great Pyramid received its 
royal occupant. Or, to give to this patriarch among 
pyramids its full panoply of years, it had been crowned 
with two thousand of them before Abraham — Israel's 
patriarch — drove his flocks over the plains of Judah. But 
what matters the centuries older, the centuries younger 

13 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

to the eyes that to-day see this olde^ pyramid through 
the same never-aging purple mi^? In their browns 
and their golds, in their blues and purples, and in 
their silver-white sheens the pyramids old, the pyramids 
new are all of one age — all wonderful alike, from 
the "glorious Place of Khufu"! 

So long as we Sand in the far upper air looking 
upon, 

"The whole circumference of that emptied sphere" — 
of Time, we forget to turn from the desert's side, with 
all the evidences of the old capital's greatness, to where 
in charming prospective lies again^ the golden background 
of the Mokattan Hills, Egypt's capital of to-day. The 
Nile coming from his wilderness-places in the far South 
carries pa^ the once "hundred gated" capital the 
white winged messengers of work and of pleasure even 
to Cairo's gates. 

We are unheedful of this pidture of To-day so 
long as the panorama of Yesterday keeps slowly 
unfolding again^ horizon's, hardly separable from the 
desert's, infinite gradations of color. It is true that 
there is much tomb-^rewn ground about Egypt's new 
capital; ground grim and flowerless as that which buries 
with the debris of violated graves the sandy plains of 
Sakkara. But these have a modern environment — a 
something foreign to the subtle spirit of Egypt's pa^ — and 
this the traveler is not searching for. Over and among 
the tombs of the modem Necropolis, scarabs may be 
14 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

creeping and images of gods guarding, but there is now 
no pouring of libations of wine on the grave of some 
unfortunate Lady Atol to insure to her the smiles of 
that great sun-god who smiles so beneficiently, even to the 
outermo^ "rim of the world" on the desert side. 

There is one of the many mile-ftones, within "the 
circumference of that emptied sphere" — that lies lower 
down than any, measures less in comparison than 
any and yet is the greater among them. Who 
doubts this, that after seeing how far, far below 
the Giant Cheops lies the Sphinx, sees also how 
imperiously this ^rangely fashioned creature out-ranks 
the great in greatness! Only one of her kind in all 
the world; lowly placed; at the very foot^ool of the 
towering Cheops she is yet not lowly. Through the 
centuries of her life men have vied with each other 
in trying to find a name fitting, as title worthy — a 
something that would express more than— "The 
Sphinx!" and they will go on trying for what 
"Zeus has not yet revealed" — 

When the great Sun-god begins to take his way 
from off the top of the Pyramid of Cheops he will 
begin also to send the mighty shadow of its form across 
the plain toward Cairo. In solid darkness the shapely 
pyramidal form is impressed upon the green of the 
fields, elongates its deep dark shadow until, 

A thing more wondrous than the Sun-god's 
wondrous gold; 

15 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

And what he shows not 'til his disk is 

buried half 
Within the yellow, shifting seas of sand — 
An outlined whole, — the Pyramid's great 
shadow on the land! 
And this shadow travels with slow diredness across 
the green fields toward Cairo until its extreme point 
touches to dimness the gold of the minarets of Mahomet 
Ali's mosque, to dimness the reds, the purples and the 
sapphires that have been burning along the ridges of the 
far-traveling Mokattan Hills, to utter darkness the solemn 
gray water, and then itself is gone like the magic thing it 
is. And this, has been the "phantom shadow-show" of 
the Great Pyramid for six thousand and more years! 



16 



THE SPHINX 




THE SPHINX 

[EMPLE^, pyramids and tombs are numberless 
and marvelous in this land, made by nature 
and man, the moS unique on the face of the 
earth. Its river is like to no other, its sands 
like to no other, its monuments like none, and 
its Sphinx the only one of its kind. 

The day by day, that makes the centuries, has seen 
men come "from the four comers of the earth" to walk 
about this ^rangeft of Egypt's monuments; to look, to 
que^ion and to wonder. Whose the conception, whose 
the skill to embody that conception, what the hi^ory, what 
the legends? — are que^ions that do not intrude themselves 
as one looks up into the ^ony eyes and to the sealed 
lips that have so long watched and guarded Time's 
my^eries. Since then, it is none of these things that 
present themselves, it is into the very heart of the 
desert, far away among its shifting wind-sculptures, among 
its hot, burning sun-glories and its softly gathered 
moonlights, that we would think to go to find this 
lonely creature — this one only of its kind. 

But it is close to the much traveled way that climbs 
from the plain to the base of the Pyramids of Gizeh, round 

17 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

and pa^ these, down among the deep sand dunes, that 
this ^rangely fashioned one abides. Among these same 
engulfing sands the several smaller pyramids wear a look 
of helplessness — seem to have come in from some lo^ 
battle with their arch enemy on the plain, to seek 
protedion of the greater of their kind; but not so 
po^ured is the Sphinx. However low down in the 
valley, at the very foot^ool of the great Cheops, the 
Sphinx looks neither lowly nor helpless; neither shrinking 
from the full consumation of Fate's wor^. 

It is with head ered and back turned to the work 
of men's hands that this unconquered guarder of 
my^eries keeps To-day as Yefterday consort with the 
Unknown. Multilation has well nigh done its wor^ to 
de^ory features and efface colors; the eyes are broken, and 
yet there is no loss of vision in the calmness, and 
dignity, and the onlook of their far gaze. Not in the 
pa^ — but always into futurity these broken eyes are 
looking, — a look holding an expression not more easily 
defined than is that thing men feel when, for a 
moment, they believe themselves satisfied with defiiny be 
it what it may. 

What matters it then to this Sovereign of the 
Eternities whether the symbol of an earthly sovereignty 
re^s upon its brow or lies prone in the sand at its 
feet? Hidden behind the closed lips there is an abiding 
knowledge; half revealed in the broken eyes the supremacy 
of law. 
18 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

All this is why the visitor to the Sphinx is 
regardless of its hi^ory and sees no likeness to any 
royal progenitor. Amenemhet III is forgotten, Rameses 
the Great forgotten, and the little temple beneath the 
all seeing forgotten, but the Sphinx will not forget the 
divine command — " — ^ay ever as thou art." 

***** 

Kinglake wrote for many when after looking into 
the eyes of the Sphinx he there saw, felt, and recorded 
how, — "more wondrous and more awful than all else in 
the land of Egypt there sits the lonely Sphinx. Comely 
the creature is, but the comeliness is not of this world: the 
once worshipped bea^ as a deformity and a monger to 
this generation and yet you can see that those lips so 
thick and heavy, were fashioned according to some 
ancient mould of beauty now forgotten, — forgotten because 
that Greece drew forth Cytherea from the flashing foam 
of the yEgean, and in her image created new forms of 
beauty, and made it a law among men that the short 
and proudly wreathed lips should be for the sign and 
the main condition of loveHness through all generations 
to come. Yet ^ill there lives on in the race of those 
who were beautiful in the fashion of the elder world; and 
Chri^ian girls with Coptic blood will look on you with 
sad, serious gaze, and kiss your charitable hand with 
big pouting lips of the very Sphinx." 

And then, turning from the reason of our eyes' failure 
to recognize as a beauty-type these "big, pouting 

19 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

lips," Kinglake goes on to write of the defacement of 
idols; and seeing how the defacements and mutilations 
of the Sphinx has failed to take from it one jot of 
myflery or changed one iota its unchangeableness, Kinglake 
records its claims to sovereignty thus, — "Upon ancient 
dynamics of Ethiopian and Egyptian kings, upon Greek 
and Roman, upon Arab and Ottoman conquerer, upon 
Napoleon dreaming of an EaSem Empire, upon battle 
and pestilence, upon ceaseless misery of the Egyptian 
race, upon keen-eyed travelers, — Heroditus yeSerday 
and Waburton to-day — upon all and more this unwordly 
Sphinx has watched, and watched like a Providence, with 
the same eameil eyes, and the same sad tranquil mien." 
* * * * * 

"You dare not mock at the Sphinx." 
Day by day the children of the desert and the 
Granger, come to crouch in the sand and look up into 
this creature's eyes; and night by night the Sars in 
cluSered groups watch for some sign. And ^ill no 
sign is given. The que^ioning ^ars withdraw, the 
morning breaks again, — again and yet again — to 
find The Sphinx enthroned as Ye^erday. The earth 
beneath is ever quiet, no throes of Nature more 
diSurbing than the winds. Ceaselessly these gather 
together the sands and toss them with playful violence 
into the ^ony eyes — ^ill no sign is given. The sands 
have no power to blind, neither to divert the limitless 
gaze. What see those eyes besides — 
20 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

A long Wretch of desert sand, 
Sky, and sand again? 
Sky and sand, and then on every hand 
Silence! Time's secret keeping 
'Spite the world's command. 

A long Wretch of sand and sky. 

Sky — and sand again — 

The while, down-crouching, — holding life 

gone by 
Silence! Time's secret guarding 
'Gainit earth's low and high. 



21 



FROM TEMPLE TO TEMPLE 




FROM TEMPLE TO TEMPLE 

jOTWITHSTANDING that Egypt is possessed 
of so transcendent a share of sun-lit sky and air 
delicious, and palms, and the Nile bordered 
with surpassing green, it is impossible not to 
miss those features of natural beauty which are 
so all-enhancing ju^ over the Mediterranean under Italy's 
skies. Wooded hills, vine-hung glades, flower-barred 
terraces are the land's portion in Italy, while her ruins 
are run over in magnificent profusion with the 
fresh, clinging life of vines that in their very joyousness 
obliterate all traces of Time's defacement and confer an 
heritage of eternal youth. 

But in Eg)^t there is none of this, hers is the 
heritage of age. Did she ever wear the garlands of 
youth? or did a filet of vines ever bind the forehead of 
the Sphinx? 

When the ancient Romans invaded the land of the 
Nile it was not in sylvan pools they found the lotus 
blooming neither found they Arcadian groves and gardens 
lying in splendid rivalry as on Amo's banks, nor yet was 
it any familiar features that birred the Roman heart 
and woke in it a spirit of rivalry — woke it, but Egypt's 
temples remained unrivaled. 

23 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

In lieu of Nature's familiar beauty Egypt offers 
near a thousand miles of temple ^rewn, temple crowned 
river banks. From the lone obelisk that ilands to mark 
the site of the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis — the 
city of the sun — in Lower Egypt, to the four colossi of 
the great Rameses that sit guarding the entrance to the 
rock-hewn Abu Simbal in Upper Egypt, there are the 
ruins of some forty temples, large and small, besides 
tombs countless and a wealth of broken ^atues. Night 
by night the voyager by dahabeyah — those white-winged 
birds of the Nile — lowers sail under shadow of these 
and day by day renews his wondering admiration. 

In a day that travelers are searching for old roads 
and making new ones, up and dovsm the earth, to 
discover that of the Exodus in Egypt would be an 
event indeed: but like the source of the Nile no search 
has brought it to light. Over that hi^oric road the 
wise Solomon, three centuries after the children of 
Israel had traveled it, mu^ have come to fetch his 
royal bride, "even into the City of David." And if 
the traveler of to-day is a Bible ^udent he will go, Bible 
in hand, into the shadow of that lone obelisk at 
Heliopolis, and turning to Genesis, will there read that 
it was a daughter of a prie^ of On— (Heliopolis) who 
was by Pharaoh given in marriage to Joseph. It might 
well have been this same priest of On — for the prices 
of The Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis were among 
the wise men of their day — who fir^ gathered together 
24 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

the be^ traditionary knowledge of his times and 
supplementing it by Joseph's belief in a "one only 
God"; gave it to be the theme of an immortal hymn which 
was written by one of Egypt's sweet poetic singers. 

This poetic record found so secure a sandtuary that 
ages after, it came forth with all its classic purity fresh upon 
it — its te^imony significant. It was, says the poet, "The 
Unseen Hand" that drew an all-concealing curtain to let 
pass out upon the world's ^age and there to enter upon 
an earthly reign, seven great gods, who were in succession 
to bear the title "Lord of the thrones of the earth". 

Of this earthly reign of the gods the pilgrim 
from "Temple to Temple" will be con^antly reading, will 
con^antly be hearing the song of their virtues and their 
glories, con^antly be going back with them to that border 
land of mythology where there are no temples, gods or kings 
but from whence ^ill issues forth the old, old hymn to 
the Unseen — the one only God — "One and Alone" — 

This emergence upon the world's ^age, in 
Egypt, of seven great gods was followed by the 
building of great temples. Stone was waiting in the 
quarries of the South with which to build, and 
about these well-nigh imperishable altars the mighty 
seven, — Ptah, Ra, Sho, Seb, Osiris, Set, Horus, — would 
make good their high claim to the right "to set up an 
earthly kingdom". 

The royal curtain which had been lifted for their 
passing out upon a ^age of royal doing had fallen, and 

25 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

with it also fell a darkly shadowing veil of mySery and 
tradition. 

Lo^ to Egypt was the sound of that psalm which 
familiarly phrased the world's greater ideal, and it was 
with incense and sacrifice, with victories, and feSivals of 
them, that the worship of these "lords of the thrones" was 
eftablished in "all the land of Egypt". It was then that the 
priefts arrayed the various gods in ve^ments prescribed by 
the sacred canons and made to them offerings— not to 
be numbered— of animals, of fruit, flowers, v^ne and 
oil; and burned incense before them — but the old hymn 
what of it? The prie^s if they ever knew, had 
forgotten the hymn which declared — 
" God is One and Alone, and there is none other with Him. 
God is the One, the One who has made all things. 
God is a Spirit, a hidden Spirit, the Spirit of Spirits, 
the great Spirit of Egypt, the divine Spirit". 
***** 

Here, fair skin and bronze skin are alike back at 
Genesis and there acknowledging the unity and infinity 
of the "Fir^ of All" are ready to hear the whole ^ory 
over again, ready to watch again the 
" — magic Shadow Show, 
whose candle is the Sun — 
Round which we Phantom figures come and go". 

In the Temple of the Sun, at Heliopolis, very 
splendidly, very learnedly was this "magic Shadow 
26 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

Show" of the gods as ushered in by the favored 
seven, carried on through many ages by prices and 
kings who were alike the "lords of the thrones" of the 
world. Whether these allowed to be e^ablished or 
themselves e^ablished the worship of themselves in the 
place of their Sender-forth, the "One Alone", the result 
was to confer upon them godly honors and to Egypt 
that elaborate ritual of religion which, it is said, only 
the prices underwood. Certain it is, if this ritual was 
as complex as the relationships between the Egyptian 
deities with their many divisions and sub-divisions of 
attributes, it surely required a good degree of concentration 
as well as of consecration if the office of prie^hood was 
to be intelligently admini^ered. 

Making then, this Temple of the Sun the visitor's 
pylon-of-entrance to all the Nile temples, he notes — and 
it seems a delightful augury — that this celebrated temple 
from which so much knowledge eminated has been 
dedicated to the god of light — the great sun-god, Ra — and 
that he had here been represented with a human head, 
the seat of knowledge, but with the body of the sacred 
bull, symbol of ^rength superior to the human. There 
is something very splendid in the birthright of Ra, the 
sun-god, — who now reigns so indisputable at Heliopolis — 
and in the manner of his presentation. The legend runs 
the sky— Nu— was his father, and born of the glorious 
and eternal blue he sailed across it in his boat of life, a 
god-\iking making war upon the day's enemy, darkness; and 

27 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

it was with the whole of the heavens for a background 
that he drove Apap from off the ea^em ramparts and 
rising in glory above them was hailed Ra Harmachis — god 
of the morning! On he went with ever increasing glory 
to the midday, on into the afternoon late, before his 
transformation into Tmu, radiant and resplendid! From 
thence he would pass into the myitery of re-creation, to 
the glory of a new day! God of the sky he was, it 
was natural he -should be of its color, and be so 
represented. Two long feathers he wore upon his head 
and in his hands he carried a key and a scepter, symbols 
of life and power. As Solar Deity he burned the truth 
of his life-giving power into the earth, forced gods and 
men to worship him, to believe that in him was every 
required attribute of power and lability and in him was 
the source of every other deity's attributes. Great was 
Ra then in all the Land of Egypt— Great now! 

Ruin at Heliopolis is complete, no column, no 
pylon to mark the ingress and egress of learned prie^s 
and their followers; one only of the two famous obelisks of 
Usertesen I, remain to bear witness that it was in 
celebration of the first fe^ival of Set that this king 
of "Upper and Lower Egypt, lord of diadems, son of the 
Sun, he whom the spirits of On love"— here raised 
the "red granite obelisks". The wild bees now sing their 
songs of labor about this one high shaft and deposit 
their honey among the hieroglyphic inscriptions. 

The Museum at Cairo, in^indt as it is with the 
26 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

life of centuries of ye^erdays, has already familiarized 
the mind of the traveler with Egypt's treasures from 
the mo^ minute seeds of grain long hidden away in 
tombs, to the well nigh colossal objeds in ^one, once 
a part of temples and of tombs. And if it is the 
intent of any holiday visitor to become an amateur 
Egyptologi^ he could not begin his Indies more 
felicitously than in the truly wonderful Museum at 
Cairo. Here he may verify and enlarge any ^ock of 
knowledge he may possess by walking days and weeks 
together face to face with Egypt's sons and daughters, see 
samples of their handicraft, read their written-m-^one 
records, see their kings, gods and goddesses m wood or 
^one imagery, and laSdy look into their mummied faces 
and read how "a thousand years is as a day". 

He will there become familiar with all the 
legendary hi^ory of the "North Land" and of the "South 
Land"; with the kings of the North wearing the red 
crown, the Hly for their symbol, the kings of the South 
wearing the white crown vv^th the papyrus for 
symbol; and see when that these two symbols were 
united, — as they were in Egypt's early hi^oric 
days, — they formed the arms of the empire. With 
this union went also that of the two crowns, giving to 
the wearer of the double tiara the title of "Lord of 
both Lands". FamiHar as will become the Museum's 
objedl lessons they will never become uninterefting. 

At Memphis the ruin is as complete as at 

29 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

Heliopolis. The "House of the Spirit of Ptah" is 
indeed gone. Not a gate by which to enter, not a 
sun-embalmed court in which to Hnger. Ptah, — "the 
lord of truth", chief of the immortal seven, father of 
all gods and of all men — where dwells he now? It 
was at Memphis that Menes, fir^ of Egypt's kings, took 
his seat upon Egypt's throne. Not a divinity but a 
man was this fir^ king Menes who in 5004 B. C. chose 
Memphis for his capital and established the fir^ of that 
long line of dyna^ies whose fate it was to meet the 
conquering Persians. Page upon page of hiflory unroll 
splendid and tragic Tories over the plain of Memphis, but 
to-day the Sun-god holds right to the only throne in 
this kingdom desolated — given over to ruin entire. 

It is not a bettered position that the preservers of 
Egypt's monuments have given to the itatue of Rameses 
that so long lay in a pidturesque half-burial under the 
palms. In a bed of sand, under the softening influence 
of the miniSering shade this mutilated ^atue was a 
pleasing feature in the ruined city of Ptah; but now even 
the palms seem to join in the Granger's indifferent curiosity 
as they look down upon the hard ^one effigy. 

The Necropolis of Memphis, far outranks in intere^ 
the ruins of the once proud city. The deep sand paths 
lead into a very world of tombs and then, through the 
highways and byways of the sandy desert sea, to where 
the rock-hewn subterranean Apis Tombs open hke a 
my^erious cave. 
30 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

Here it is that the traveler gets a very real idea 
of the important place held by the sacred Apis in the 
worship of the ancient Egyptian; and possibly it is 
because in the sight of his ow^n eyes, the traveler here 
for the fir^ time verifies the truth of all that has been 
so often written of the marvelously Grange tombs of 
Egypt, that these Apis tombs will continue to hold no 
secondary place in his memory, however they may come 
to be outranked in Sepulcheral Art, and in intere^. 

There is a long day of donkey riding hereabouts 
before "Tmu" goes down in the glory of his evening 
light behind the desert's golden di^ances. 

From the top of the Great Pyramid the traveler 

has looked upon the "vapor-belted pyramids" of Memphis 

and her Necropolis; upon the mosques and minarets 

of exquisite grace at Cairo; upon the golden Mokattan 

Hills and the more golden Lybian desert, these, all 

have been made a fit preparation for the thousand 

miles of Nile voyaging; and Memphis the old capital, 

with Cairo the new, is loil to sight. The Nile voyage 

proper is entered on. The river leads the way into 

the South, and on her banks near,— or farther 

desert-ward — the ruins of Egypt's temples begin to appear 

wdth their traditions and 

— "inventions 
***** 

Down the pa^ ages, mu^ know more than this age! 
Leave we the web its dimensions!" 

31 



ABYDOS 




ABYDOS 

HERE is no description of the wondrously 
decorated walls of Egypt's temples that can 
possibly convey an idea of the impression they 
make upon an appreciator of Egyptian Art. If 
it is not all good— far from it — in almo^ every 
temple there are some vv^alls or bits of vs^all, whereon the 
subjedts are portrayed with truly great arti^ic skill, and 
along the walls of Seti's temple are some of these. To 
Osiris, he of titles out-numbering those of the Sun-god, was 
given a prenatal marriage with his si^er Isis. They 
were the children of Nut, the heaven, and of Seb, the 
earth, and were the parents of Horus, the "young 



sun". 



These three made the trinity at ancient Abydos and 
were there worshipped with great religious fervor; Osiris 
always retaining his supremacy, though under the New 
Empire ( 1600- 1 100 B. C.) Ptah, Harmachis, and Ammon 
were also worshipped at "Ancient Abydos", which was 
watched over by the great lord of the under-world, by 
the beautiful Isis, and the resplendant young Horus, and 
that "ancient Abydos" was the Mecca of Osiris 
worshippers, the guarder of his tomb. And not only 
the Mecca of worshippers was the Temple of Osiris, but 

35 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

his tomb was the Mecca of the dead. Buried close 
about were the specially fortunate while the mummies 
of the less fortunate were brought from diSant parts 
of the Empire to receive a burial consecration before 
being carried away to their own tombs. For these, in 
leaving, memorial itone— ^ela — were set up to insure 
to each soul the god's remembrance. This ^ela 
made, moreover, a something like a place of re^ for the 
soul, from whence it could the easier continue its journey 
through the opening of that gorge which led on to the 
solar barge, — a barge very generally represented on the 
walls of temples and tombs. 

In the Museum at Cairo are many of the Abydos 
funeral ^elae, which, as has been well explained, differ from 
the ^elae of the Memphite period in that the gods, together 
with the table of offerings and emblems symbolic of the 
future life, were given representation. The two-winged 
solar disk so often seen on ^elae, and elsewhere, mu^ have 
been a happy addition to the funereal symbolism, helping 
the bereaved to see how the bird-soul could not be 
imprisoned in a tomb but with wide spread wings 
went forth in glorious flight to follow the Sun in its 
course, nor losing sight of the great god night or 
day. Not less intere^ing is the symbolism of the two 
eyes — the sun and the moon — light always, day and 
night again, no hour of darkness to the soul, and in so 
far it knew heaven. Other symbols, and many, express 
the belief of the old Egyptian in the liberty of the soul 
36 



-nrff 




UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

once it was set free from the body. Through the 
universe it might roam, borne on its own wide wings, or 
over the waters, girdling the earth it might sail, embarked 
in the Sun-barge; on, on, ever with the Sun god in his 
splendid goings, ever under the care of divine 
protedors, ever free to partake of fruit and wine and all 
good things, placed by the hands of love within the 
body's tomb or at some memorial place, — as at 
Abydos, where the memorial ^ones were set up in such 
countless numbers. Notwith^anding so large a share 
of Egypt's antique treasures have been gathered up 
and ^ored safely in Museums, it is left to the traveler 
to go to her unmovable shrines and there find them, prone 
m the sand maybe, as is the shrine of Osiris at 
Abydos. Defacement has not obliterated from temple 
walls records entru^ed to them, and at Abydos the terse 
record of the twenty-five hundred years of life of 
Seti's temple reads, — "Built by Seti I, completed by 
Rameses II, excavated by Mariette Bey!" Every traveler 
feels grateful to Mariette Bey! — 

At Abydos he is to note how in both ground plan and 
its arrangement this temple differs from others. Not one 
sanduary but seven, not one chamber placed one behind 
another but side by side, and not one portal but seven, each 
leading into one of the seven divisions. Ranged 
in double pairs across the fir^ Hypo^yle Hall are 
the twenty-four columns with their very beautiful 
papyrus-bud capitals. These flanked the processional aisles 

37 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

dedicated to six gods and the king. There had been 
under the New Empire (l 600-1 100 B. C.) another 
triad of deities added to that of Osiris, Isis, Horus, for 
worship at Abydos, and though Seti and Rameses 
dedicated their temples to Osiris they eftabhshed the 
worship of Ptah, Harmachis, and Ammon; and in the Seti 
temple it was to Ammon that the central processional 
aisle was dedicated, with the triad of Abydos, occupying 
the three on his right; Harmachis, Ptah and the King 
the three on his left. Beyond the fir^ Hypoftyle is the 
second, larger but with the same arrangement of its 
thirty-six columns and with the same processional 
arrangement of aisles leading on and into the innermoS 
chambers. In all the seven sanduaries dedicated to this 
double triad — and the king — there is the sacred boat; the 
reliefs on the various walls are extremely well done, 
especially the profiles of Rameses. 

Near by this heSi. preserved of the Abydos' ruins, is 
all that is left of what is believed to have been 
Rameses' moft beautiful temple. Not for size was it 
remarkable but for the fine materials he chose for 
it. Black and red granite, alaba^er, the fine^ of 
lime^one; the reliefs done with the utmo^ delicacy and 
the coloring of the mural decorations so brilliant that 
they ^ill hold their beauty. What a climate is this, that 
when all the walls are roofless they wear their color 
undimmed through the centuries, their tracings unbroken 
by fro^, unharmed by rain. 
38 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

The remnants of these two temples built by father 
and son — Seti I and the great Rameses— sugge^ by their 
close proximity to each other that these monarchs 
united, upheld the entire — every form of — the Egyptian 
religion; and indicate the close and friendly bonds 
between a father and son whose joint reign covered 
a period of near eighty years. There are many 
descriptions of Seti's appearance; men see him to-day 
lying in royal mummied-^ate in the Museum of Cairo 
and it is agreed that calm and pleasing as is the 
expression of his face there are lines that reach through 
the boldly vigorous to a ruthless tyranny. 

However this may be, he had himself represented 
as an ardent worshipper and granter of favors to all 
the temple-shrines; and mo^ royally were his gifts showered 
upon the pre-eminent Ammon-Ra, Isis, Horus, Osiris 
and Hathor in the Abydos temple. 

Beginning with Abydos the traveler learns that 
however one temple plan my differ from, or bear 
resemblance to another, yet in each the ruinous ^ate so 
differs that the features of each look unfamiliar, need 
re-adju^ment before they take their proper place in 
acquaintance. Another feature wholly unique among 
the ruins of the ancient temples of Egypt is that Seti's 
temple ^ill wears its roof, ^ill shuts out the light from 
skies that everywhere is an augmenter of beauty often a 
creator of all of it that there is. 

From out these never somber, never threatening 

39 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

skies come the midday's blue, the scarlet, the gold and 
the purples; all these that create seas of lilac in which 
swim the Sar-barges of Egypt's skies and under which 
the traveler waits for the morning to disclose to him 
the ruins of the temple of Hathor at Dendera. 



40 



TEMPLE OF HATHOR 




TEMPLE OF HATHOR 

?HOUGH Dendera was not venerated as was 
Abydos and Thebes, ma^erpieces of the 
Pharaohs, of the Ptolomies, of the Caesars, are 
here in splendid profusion. Among these the 
despoilers did merciless work. 
The thousand feet of wall, the beautiful 
temple, pylon, crypt, all — all offered insufficient 
resi^ance, and whether mutely or not, succumbed in 
their beauty and ^rength alike to the deSroyer. From 
the numberless columns the goddess of love and 
joy — (Hathor, the Egyptian Aphrodite) — had watched 
the magnificent processions pass to and fro in worship 
of, and honor to her. Her treasure-crypt she had seen 
filled with the spoils of war, through ages far anti-dating 
that fir^ century B. C. in which this la^ temple was 
dedicated to her. She had seen all, all that her devotees 
could do to enthrone her in the mid^ of unsurpassed 
splendor and, alas, she had seen all her despoilers could 
do to dethrone her. Once this "Lady of Beauty" looked 
down from every column's capital upon the infinite 
multitude of ibis-headed, hawk-headed, cow-headed deities 
that from their thrones, upon the column's sides, raised 

41 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

toward her numerous and my^erious emblems; or joined 
the ceremonious processions through the incense perfumed 
air. Once the portrayal of all this was beautiful in its 
sculptured detail upon these fine columns; now we see 
it with a grievous defacement upon it, not a face within 
arm's reach and much other detail marred, and yet 
well preserved is the temple in general. To compare 
this Temple of Hathor with its si^er temples of Abydos 
and great Kamak is to find it lacking in size and 
magnificence, but in splendid symmetry and dignified 
proportions it is worthy the admiration it once elicited; and 
if the hieroglyphic work lacks a finish in execution; it is 
truly marvelous in mass. Like a great volume, page 
by page closely written, are the walls, columns, and 
ceiling; everywhere hi^ory of every kind. From 
the blackened ceilings there dimly emerge winged 
globes, scarabasi; and emblems of the zodiac; from 
the walls and columns bird and bea^ show their 
share in man's e^ate. From kingly conqueror to 
the-captured-in-war, the chronicles go on to give a li^ 
of cities, longer li^s of treasure; of weights, measures 
and receipts; of rites and feftivals, prayers and legend; and 
however well we learn to read all this hi^ory, ^rangeness 
and myftery are not lessened by any of these records, neither 
is the wonder with which we take our way through 
corridors, aisles, halls, birthrooms and sacri^ies. Within 
this temple of the goddess of love and joy, it is easy for 
imagination to set the once-divine images upon their 
42 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

broken shrines. There awaits the small sanduary 
of the beautiful Isis; — and she? — The oratory of 
Hathor— darken of sanduaries and "Holy of Holies"— is 
where the king might in solemn commune with Deity, lift 
and veil the golden Si^rum of the goddess, carry it 
from its shrine and re-enshrine it in one of the 
sacred boats. 

Outside is the lovely Hathor-columned Kiosque, 
where was begun the rites of the New Year's fe^ival 
celebration. In kingly and prie^ly order with ^andard 
bearers and chant of hymns, the my^erious procession 
went the temple rounds; and then, that the goddess might 
feel the glow of the great Sun-god's love for his 
daughter, the long procession ascended to the roof: proof 
this, that these great ones knew how to value the 
greater among them — their Sun-god. 

On the dark walls of this dark fairway by which 
the goddess ascended to the temple roof, the beauty of 
the sculptor's work is intad, the darkness doubtless 
shielding it from the general defacement; and as no 
other mischances of time have come to despoil it, that 
Grange royal procession has lo^ none of its pri^ine 
freshness. Other Hathor shrines are to be seen from 
the various levels of the temple roof, other shrines to be 
visited; some buried in rubbish, some lying half revealed 
in sand and debris. 

In looking at the much-commented on portrait of 
Cleopatra and her son Caesarion, that is here so well 

43 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

sculptured, the traveler is glad to believe it is no 
likeness of the "fair Macedonian". Were it, hiSory 
has misled our imagination. 

From the temple roof to which the goddess 
ascended to feel the glow of the great Sun-god's love, her 
eyes muSt often have watched the old river taking its 
processional way to the sea. Was it less solemn 
then when it gave back in unbroken beauty the 
refledion of temple and temple shrine— at Dendera? 



44 



THE TEMPLE OF LUXOR 




THE TEMPLE OF LUXOR 

"Even things without life giving a voice." 

jUT on the Nile the winged boats are transformed 
from their gull-like whiteness to an amber hue 
and the breeze turns the fluttering canvas to 
a something soft like plumage. To north 
and south where there are no dark cliffs 
threatening to close the river's passage, no clouds in 
the sky threatening to cut the evening glory off, the 
light gathers and greatens. Toward the sunset the 
breeze lifts the leaves of the clu^ered palms to let it 
pass adown the river from whence comes back that 
effulgent glory, that unsurpassed beauty, the sunset's 
afterglow. It was in the unsurpassed beauty of a 
sunset's afterglow, that we for the fir^ time saw ^landing 
high on the ea^ bank of the Nile the Temple of 
Luxor. 

Only a pidured page onto which had been 
poured the liquid light and color of Egypt's skies 
would worthily portray the quite idealic beauty of 
those splendid roofless columns that come almo^ 
trooping over the Nile's high bank to meet the 
voyageur. The ruins on the Theban plain ^and 

47 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

aloof, far back toward the golden mountains, but the 
lovely ruins of the Luxor temple are as gracious as 
grateful in greeting. That fir^ happy impression 
clings, nor loosens its hold even after the claims of 
lordly Karnak and all its royal confreres of the Theban 
plains. 

A thousand years after Thebes began her life of 
splendor and of triumph, Amenhetep III, (l8th 
dyna^y) built upon the black foundation ^ones of the 
then ruined Temple of Sebek-em-Saf, this temple of 
Luxor; and had he built w^ith no other intent than to 
overcome the powers of Time, nor met vsath forces 
more de^rudive, his work would have now been almo^ 
without defacement; for Time has but a small charge 
again^ it in a land where the atmosphere is such a 
conserver. Row by row in splendid beauty ^and the 
3400 years-old columns, their exquisitely wrought 
capitals without roof, nor needing one to protedt 
them. Sunlight and ^arlight and moonlight never had 
a better chance to enlarge architectural beauty than in this 
temple, and if its roofless colonnades and hieroglyphiced 
walls ^ir the imagination they do not leave it without 
plenty of historic material with which to build. 

In quick succeeding waves of light the sun passes 
over these pidured walls retouching their brighter 
color. On one of these walls there comes gaily out a 
pidure of the earlier temple, showing how finely it was 
appointed, with propylon, colossi, obelisks, and floating 
48 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

bannered ensigns. Since in the Luxor temple there are 
no bat-haunted neither smoke-disfigured walls nor rifling 
atmosphere, but all so bright and open to the sky, one 
could look to see a butterfly, a thi^ledown come on the 
breeze to help make real our silver-day among these 
columns. 

The King was once young here, for here is his 
birth-chamber, — the table of offerings to which the infant 
king with his Ka was brought, in presentation to the 
great god Ammon-Ra, to whose glory the lives of so 
many of Egypt's beil were consecrated. 

It was 1300 B. C. before the great Rameses came 
to enhance the beauty of Amenhetep's temple; here as 
elsewhere carrying "from glory to glory" the building 
work of his predecessor. From Kamak to Luxor he 
had gone and come by way of the Avenue of Sphinxes 
and had noted how this avenue ought to be made to 
approach centrally the Temple of Luxor. To this end 
a forecourt with pylons mu^ be built even were it 
necessary to encroach upon some of the pedeilalled 
sphinxes. Two miles away rose in splendid viita the 
kingly Kamak temple and it is small wonder that the 
mailer-builder decided the approach to the latter of the 
two temples mu^ be fitting. 

Cumbered with uninviting du^ heaps this Sphinx 
avenue now lies closed, but what there is of its once 
splendid whole is a pure white wonder under the sun's 
bleach, and fills the mind with an immense desire to 

49 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

appearance, a desolateness, that robs them wholly of their 
birthright charm. At home among their own, they share 
so largely in a ruin's honors that it is a thousand pities to 
allow them to be carried to skies alien and de^rudive. 

Near to these two obelisks, within the precindls of 
a not less beautiful colonnade, there were also two ^atues 
of the great Rameses; one only of these now remains to 
show the superb workmanship of both. As at Abu Simbal 
this Rameses looks from his twelve feet high enthronement 
with that benign expression which bears witness to the 
traditional dignity of the Pharaohs. Loitering about 
this colonnade of poetic name — Hero-en-Heb — the visitor 
would fain find pede^aled, even as the Rameses, the 
older royal builder, Amenhetep and his Mesopotamian 
queen; he with his face of refinement, she with her 
woman's loveliness. 

The scene shifts indeed when we leave the 
Hero-en-Heb colonnade — an altar built "to the mo^ 
brave, holy and unconquered Caesar". This is a false 
note, an inharmony in the old Egyptian song. What 
downfall is this that the ^atues of the Roman emperors 
should be set up in temples dedicated to Ammon-Ra, god 
of the Sun, god of all Egypt! We are in the land of 
the Pharaohs, a land that mu^ always be theirs however 
overrun by conquerors. None of these Grangers wore 
the double crown, none of these might unroll a papyrus 
and show how they were the lineal descendants of gods 
and demigods, those mighty ance^ors that came down 

51 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

from the One Throne, down from the transcendant 
blue of Egypt's skies to reign under the same blue 
skies forever. 

Back then to the Pharaohs again, and in their 
temple of Luxor go on reading of Rameses and his 
all conquering might. His "single-handed" battle with 
the Khiti, (Hillitas)— the mowing down of these "like 
^raw before the swing of the royal scythe," Rameses 
had so beautifully done in ^one on the walls at 
Abydos, Luxor, Kamak and at Abu Simbal that it at 
once commemorates the prowess of the great king and the 
genius of the poet Pentaur. Miss Edwards' comment of 
these pidured walls is, — "no poem has ever been so regally 
edited. With brilliant bas reliefs for illu^rations, all the 
song engraved upon ^one, with the walls of the great 
temples for binding. A splendid edition de Luxe!" 

A very complete copy of this poem, a papyrus, is in 
the British Museum. I copy from Professor Lushington's 
translation. (See Appendix) 

The power of Ammon-Ra is broken, his altars 
deva^ated; the sword of the Great Rameses sheathed; but 
pidured walls and columns hold single-handed again^ the 
onslaught of Time the ^ory of the vanished and the 
vanquished secure. 

"Even things without life giving a voice." 



52 



ajfOuA-.^- 




KARNAK AND THE THEBAN PLAIN 




KARNAK AND THE THEBAN PLAIN 

S the Nile approaches the site of the ancient 
Thebes it widens, its gently sloping banks 
are verdant with com and lupin, with palms 
and tamarisks. The mountamous ranges fall 
back carrying with them the yellow-rose and 
lilac lights that settle so transformingly into the shadows 
of their lime^one terraces; and it is between these 
color-beautified hills and the broadened river that there 
lies in sunny re^fulness the great Theban Plain. 

There are long pages of hi^ory telling that before 
Abraham was Thebes was, telling of its life of tragic 
romance from that far away twenty-five hundred years 
before Chri^ to its final despoiling in 1 1 B. C. In 
splendid and triumphant march from the simple rule of 
the head of a tribe to the pomp and splendor of 
Egypt's kings, through dyna^ies earth's greater, out 
from one century into another, went the life of this city 
of the Plain. 

"The hundred-gated Thebes, where twice ten 

score in martial ^ate 
Of valiant men with ^eeds and cars march 
through each massy gate." — 
So sung, and so the poet Homer named this city of many 

55 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

titles — her titles a part of her my^erious hiftory. Here 
within this "City of the Hundred Gates" was held aloft 
the sceptor of Jupiter-Ammon, — Egypt's greater 
god, — and round about this center of the highe^ form 
of Egyptian worship, round about this "City of 
Excellence", this "City of Palaces", this "City of 
Thrones", her great and mighty — the wearers of the 
double crown — built temples and obelisks and set up 
itatues numberless to the holy Triad of Thebes, to 
Ammon, to Maut and to Khons; while outside her 
walls as now, between the Nile and her gates, the 
bronzed-backed shaduf men kept the plain in emerald 
beauty. From level to level the water-weighted pole 
lifted the water of the river into the trench-seamed 
fields where the com and clover brought their fresh 
green life to the city's gates, and now as then the same 
treeless hills run their dry ramparts between this greened 
of green life and the sun-scorched barrenness of the 
desert. 

It is indeed a long and tragic page of hiSory that 
unrolls itself across this Theban Plain and into the deep 
fastnesses of those Lybian hills. Who will may read, and 
who will may hear the voice of the old Spirit of the 
Plain cry, "Look, if you will, through my ruined pylons 
to my pri^ine grandeur, through my broken walls to my 
once priefl-guarded sanduaries, climb to my opened 
roof-ways and see those Lybian hills that rise in lonely 
State between me and yonder lonelier desert, and into 
56 



1 



' 1 -7' " ' M ~'^^'^ I ■ -' 








^ 




UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

whose fatnesses all my kings made their la^ royal 
march. Do this, and then mark how the glory of 
great Ammon is not wholly departed from me, neither 
the ^rength nor the beauty of my hills faded. Stone 
upon ^one ^ill re^ secure, column and obelisk, however 
broken, ^ill in maje^ it and. Did my mighty ones come 
again they would not find me desolate as are my sixers 
Carthage and Babylon, they would find Time's marks 
upon me but not lo^ to their eyes would be the signs 
of my royalty. The gold of the evening sky gilds my 
altars each day anew, the crimson of morning turns my 
avenues to the color of young blood, and all day long 
the purpling air hangs in regal beauty over and about 
me. *The tears of Isis too, forever flow in solemn 
dignity pa^ me, so turning my shores emerald in its 
growth of ever fresh young life that did my sons come 
again, bewildered they might be, might learn a lesson 
Grange indeed to them who built for all time, not for 
these short centuries gone. The despoiling of my temples 
and shrines has not undone the marvel of them. The 
long avenue between my temples of Luxor and of 
Karnak, closely sphinx-guarded as it was, succumbed 
to the de^roying hand of those half human, half animal 
hordes that overrun my sacred places with wantonness, yet 
ever)rwhere enough remains to transmit through ages yet 
to come the inviolate dignity of the spirit of my splendid 
pa^." 

*The Nile. 

57 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

It was through all that remains of this despoiled 
avenue of sphinxes that we approached the greater, the 
mo^ splendid ruins of all Egypt's ruins, the temple of 
Jupiter- Ammon at Karnak! Though these are not the 
firft of the ruins on the plain to be approached they hold 
the firS place in the visitor's intereS; and if the desire of 
the visitor to Egypt is, — "open our eyes that we may see 
wondrous things" he will nowhere see more wondrous things 
than at Karnak. And he will need to turn every one 
of those pages of hi^ory if he would have these wondrous 
things— these roofless walls, broken columns, overturned 
^atues, avenues, courts, sanduaries, triumphal pylons, — 
come about him with something less than a bewildering 
confusion. 

Mo^ fitting it was that the worshippers of Egypt's 
gods should have built the greater of their temples to 
Ammon-Ra, god of the Sun, at once the representative 
and creator of nature's greater principle, and fitting that 
they should have built this temple in their capital 
city. To turn the pages of hi^ory back to 2466 
B. C. is to find the monarchs of the twelfth dyna^ 
laying the foundation ^ones of this "Throne of the 
World"; and to follow on, page by page, is to see 
with what ambitious rivalry each succeeding Pharaoh 
laid his hand to the work, until, at the end of a 
thousand years, all their achievements were out-splendored 
by that of the greater builder of them all — "the great 
Pharaoh"— Rameses II. The work of that thousand 
58 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

years seems as so many Pepping ^ones or avenues of 
approach, leading to the greater of all; and then, through 
their own ruined way, they retreat into Time's deep 
shadows, leaving to the kings of the nineteenth dyna^y 
the honor of outranking evei"y other. With this 
achievement the name of Rameses the Great is 
inseparably linked and from that day through the 
ages since, he has held undimmed the glory of his 
renown. Up and down the Nile-land from the sea to 
Soudan the great Rameses built and re-built, wrote of 
his prowess in war and his rulings in peace on countless 
temple walls, and set up his smiling-countenanced ^atues 
at temple portals and between their colonnades. 

Egypt's mo^ glorious epoch of building coming and 
going, as it did, with the nineteenth dyna^ (1350-1200 
B. C.) crowded into a short space of time a very large 
share of that which has attraded the world through 
succeeding centuries, and the intention to build at Thebes 
a temple to Ammon, that should out-lu^er every 
other, was made good when the Temple of Kamak 
^ood with its columned hall grandly beautiful! The 
calyx-tipped, lotus-budded columns of this great hall 
was, and is, a very flower of architecture in the royal 
crown of Rameses! 

Back and forth through this always great hall we 
wander, slowly, loiteringly, back and forth Wcuider and 
wonder. Sit at the base of its columns, look up to 
their exquisite capitals; wander away to courts, and 

59 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

broken walls, always looking back, always coming back 
to sit and look and li^en yet again. It is true the 
Spirit of the Plain is not dead, neither has it gone with 
the maSer builder to his l)ang in ^ate, — so lowly, so 
lowly now at Boulak, — but is here, great Spirit ^ill! and 
bids us ^ay: and bids us look from Karnak's walls and 
see his royal consorts on the plain. 

From the delicate beauty of the Medinet Habu 
temple, lying to the south, to the terraced colonnades 
of the Great Hatasu's temple of Der-el-Bahari we 
look. Grace and ^rength are lying as close together on 
the plain as here in Ammon's temple. It was so the 
kings of the nineteenth dyna^y saw it once; only in a 
perfedness of grace and ^rength. How great mu^ have 
been the pride of their gratified ambition as they saw the 
various temples landing in perfedness of beauty from 
north to south on their rich plain. Nymph-like muft 
have looked the lady-temple of Maut, reposing on its 
mid-lake island; and the little Khons, — so youthful 
seeming beside "Great Kamak". Farther afield the 
gigantic Colossi helped their confreres to lead the 
way to the portals of the Anebopheum; and at the 
Ramesseum the mo^ colossal of the great builder's ^atues 
had fittingly completed that lordly temple's detail. If 
in the day-of-their-life these wonders of the Theban plain 
satisfied the ambitious pride of those nineteenth dyna^ 
Pharaohs, surely never elsewhere did traveler go from 
ruin to ruin with less abatement of wonder. That these 
60 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

old builders did not see the delicate beauty of the lovely 
Medinet Habu — young neighbor to their greater — was 
their loss. Quite lovely this Medinet Habu afar or 
near. 

Queen Hatasu in choosing the Lybian mountains 
for a background to the Der-el-Bahari temple chose 
as daringly as did Rameses for the rock-hewn Abu 
Simbal; and if her one objedt was to give to the 
temple an appearance of the extreme^ delicacy by 
contra^ing its fluted-like facade with the towering 
mountams, she succeeded perfectly. From the plain it 
might be thought an eyrie of the sacred hawk rather than 
the sandluary of the gentle Hathor, she who surpassed 
every other in so idealizing her earthly animal form that 
her worshippers saw not the lovely cow but the incarnation 
of beneficent Love! Dignified, beautiful, loveable; tender 
giver of nourishment to earth's children is the 
goddess-mother; and wearing the full insignia of 
deity this her beautiful ^atue was enshrined at 
Der-el-Bahari. A lately headdress with long trailing 
lotus, falls across her shapely shoulders to her feet, and 
all her form responds to the calmness and the tenderness 
of her incarnated spirit. 

Deity incarnate in ^one, silent, hidden as in the 
Sphinx, yet alive with that life which out-lives all 
incarnation, is this Hathor! Goddess! Mother! 

Had Queen Hatasu built no temple in the Lybian 
mountain's side, set up no obelisk at Kamak, or 

61 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

brought back from the Land of Punt no ships laden 
with gold and spices, but had given Egypt this one 
only Hathor, she had written her name ineffaceably on 
Time's page. 

The Pharaohs of later dynamics made contributions 
in repairs and alterations to these finished temples 
which is matter of relative importance in the hi^ory of 
them. To become familiar with the work of all the 
royal builders is to see how each in turn enhanced the 
beauty of Ammon-Ra's temple at Kamak, each in 
succession transcended the achievements of his predecessor 
until to the worshippers of the Sun-god was disclosed 
a temple unrivalled in every form of greatness. To-day 
the ruins of this great court and that great hall range 
themselves in splendid and unequalled proportions 
alongside other world-wonders, inviting the visitor to 
wander away in imagination from fads revealed to the 
unrevealed, wherein is to be found that ^ronghold of 
legendary enchantment built in the early dawn of 
Egypt's hi^ory. 

But to romance with Egyptian hi^ory is solemn 
work. There is neither a pa^ nor a present that 
seems joyous. Solemn- visa ged is the type of face that 
looks upon us from the ^atues and portraits of the 
Pharaohs, and solemnly dignified the type of their 
children of to-day. The building of temples and of 
tombs is not sugge^ive to joyousness and the ruins of 
these with contemporary records are indicative of at 
62 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

lea^ a serious bent in the minds of the ancient 
Egyptians. Was there for these anything more 
joyous than to see the long reach of sphinx-guarded 
avenues, scarab-filleted pylons, sacred lakes and girdling 
walls? 

To-day these are joy enough for the loitering 
visitor on the Theban plain. We look yet again and 
mark how the tailed obelisk in all the land (that of 
Queen Hatasu) dominates all the ruins and ^ands like 
a splendid exclamation point among them. 

One unfinished pylon at Karnak, one unfinished 
colossal ^atue of the great Rameses whitening in the 
sun in its granite quarry-bed at Asnan, mark the fall of 
the hammer from the hand of the royal builders. Some 
sudden fate and the quarries were ^ill forever — Great 
Karnak finished! 



63 



THE COLOfEMFCE OF KHONS N 
THEBAN PLAIN 



THE COLOSSI OF MEMNON 




n* 







THE COLOSSI OF MEMNON 

|EMPLE and temple ruin succeed each 
other, pylon and obelisk confront each 
other, and tombs numberless are hidden 
away in the we^ern hills. All these have a 
companionship, but out on the Theban plain 
there are two lone ^atues, high on their pede^als 
sitting, looking through ^ony eyes, — weird, gigantic; unique 
they are among Egypt's ruins. Not a column, not one 
Sone upon another left of the temple whose entrance 
they once guarded; no support, no kingly neighbor nearer 
than their once peer in Mature, the now fallen Rameses 
at the Ramesseum; none to share their desolation or make 
less their isolation. But it is ju^ this apartness, this 
unlikeness to any that attradts the visitor so Wrongly, and 
which together with the pretty musical legend clingmg 
to one of them, gives them the command of an intere^ 
that their very inconsiderable arti^ic value could 
not. Seen from almo^ any di^ance these two ^atues 
seem like genii of the devafted plain, for what else 
appears — 

"—like the bulk— 
Of Memnon's image at the set of sun 

67 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

To one who travels from the dusking Ea^; 

or sounds 
— as mournful as that Memnon's harp" — 
About these weird figures the imperial light of 
Egypt's skies falls without hindrance. The hills are a 
far remove, and nothing taller than the rich luxuriant 
clover is round about them. The tone of their yellow 
brown beauty responds to every artifice of the sun — and 
to the moon that, 

" — with alteration slow, had shed 
Her silver seasons four upon the night, 
And sill these two were poSured motionless 
Like natural sculpture — " 
There is more truth than poetic license in the 
poet's — "hke natural sculpture" poSured. Since the 
Sone looks as though it had been peeled away in deep 
Srips leaving seams and ridges that gives quite the 
appearance of Gratified rock. 

We do not look up into the broken faces of these 
Satues as into that of the Sphinx; eyes they have 
not, neither lips, nor any feature that might reveal 
some Sory of them, but down by their knees — those 
great, ungainly "feet of prayer" — there leans, in moS 
gentle portraiture, wife and mother; and beside 
them, figures of Nile gods are twining and binding 
together long-ilemmed lilies and papyrus symbols of 
an undisputed sovereignty. 

Hiflorians and artiSs have made these colossal 
68 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

^atues of Amenophis III as familiar to the world as 
are the Pyramids and that pretty legend of the "Singing 
Memnon" hung them about with a charming romance 
of Greek and Roman weaving. It was the singing of a 
sunrise hymn that transformed the Egyptian into a 
Greek. A young* Greek hero having fallen in war, his 
spirit took refuge in one of these colossal ^atues from 
whence he sent a song over the Theban plain to the hills 
of sunrise whereon his mother watched and wept. Her 
tears were turned into drops of bright beneficent 
dew, that fell with sweet refreshment upon the parched 
lips and scorched brow of her son, — assuaged his grief 
and made glad his heart. Illu^rious visitors traveled 
far to hear the Memnon sing; heard it and went 
away, carrying in their own hearts a deep sense of its 
pathos: for though these were not worshippers of the 
gods it was easy enough to fall under the spell of this 
humanly tender tradition. 

There came a day when the song of Memnon 
was finished, his voice silent; but over on the hills-of-Eos 
the sunrise comes in undimmed glory, and over the 
plain of Thebes the dewy tears of Eos fall in gli^ening 
drops of refreshment upon the grateful clover round 
about the spirit-forsaken Colossi. 



69 



I 



THE VALLEY 

OF 

THE TOMBS OF THE KINGS 




> • -i 







THE VALLEY 

OF 

THE TOMBS OF THE KINGS 

^UT a short remove from the shadow of kingly 
Karnak are those "Hills of Sunset" wherein 
the kings of the XVIIlth, XlXth and XXth 
dyna^ies made for themselves "Houses of 
Eternity" as far outranking all others as did 
temple of Karnak outrank all Egypt's temples. 
During these flourishing dyna^ies the tribute money 
that poured into the treasuries of the kings from 
Lybia, Nubia, Pale^ine and Syria, made it easy for 
them to take this mountain-proteded valley and make it 
a prototype of that one of the Underworld so vividly 
described in their religion. This underworld-valley like 
this of their seledlion, commenced on the we^ bank of 
the Nile, was long and rather narrow and even in its 
darker sedions, never left the surface of the earth. In 
other features there was less resemblance. No river 
flows through the Biban-al-Muliik valley, neither is there 
a gloomy ve^ibule at the entrance. On the contrary the 
broad roadway winds away from the plain into a valley 
pidluresque with fortress-like rocks, aglow with such 
rich and varied coloring that there is no sugge^aion of 

73 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

anything so solemnly grim as the funereal. It is true 
no tree or even a bunted shrub mark the sheltered spots 
among the silent, rocky heights of this valley-way, and 
yet so bright and sparkling are the sands, so smooth 
and gentle the climb, that one is scarcely prepared to 
see the "tall scalped mountains" draw together and 
make that rocky fatness for the royal tombs which is 
"without a counterpart 
In the whole world!" 
The king with a successfully long reign left a sure 
monument to himself in a tomb that only time and 
money could have made possible, and as the tomb 
work was the engrossing work of a life time, as well 
as one perpetuating the religious belief in the manner 
of the soul's passing on, the tombs are valued monuments 
of the men of those times. During the XVIII dyna^y 
the tomb building was presided over by the prices of 
the great Sun-god who claimed that from Ammon-Ra 
himself they had received some words that were 
magical in their power to help the soul happily pass 
through the "dark valley". This final passage would be 
the easier accomplished if the future occupant of the tomb 
made himself familiar with the long corridors and dark 
chambers of that valley of the underworld, and so king 
and kingly-prie^s became royal builders; the prices seeing 
that the corridors and chambers of the tomb conformed 
as nearly as possible to the length and shape of those in 
the valley of Tuat. 
74 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

As the visitor to the Tombs of the Kings makes the 
descent through one and another of the long corridors and 
Sands in the dark chambers he wonders not that the 
royal builder made sure to himself a knowledge of 
certain words of deliverance, as well as of the tomb's 
conftrudlion. When the body of the royal maSer was 
carried into the dark chamber the saving words were 
spoken by the prieS in office and were to be repeated 
by the soul-in-passage as it entered the Sun-god's boat 
of death and life. On these divine words hung the 
fate of the soul, the triumphant emergence from all the 
horrors of the river-way into the glorious light of the 
new life; without them there was nothing but darkness 
everlaSing. 

What were these magic words that the pneSt and 
the Sun-god taught? The king learned them and went 
forth in faith. 

The infinite care with which this valley of 
Biban-al-Muluk was seleded as a place of safety for 
the royal tombs, deserved a better fate than to have 
been discovered. The royal decree for the royal body 
was, "until the laS great day". The " Granger in a 
Grange land" decreed otherwise and so these marvelous 
tombs lie open, — their mySery vanished. Following their 
owners, all tomb treasure had gone forth into the world 
again; only they themselves with their underworld 
corridors and chambers and their pictured walls 
remain — and will. These the mountains hold in chains 

75 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

that no man may break. Their pidured walls are replete 
with the old ^ory of hopes, of fancies and beliefs; the 
long gone ye^erday proclaiming its kinship with every 
to-day. The work of the world now as then goes 
on; harve^s gleaned, fruits gathered, fish netted, sheep 
herded; and nothing unfamiliar on the Nile's banks. The 
blind-folded oxen were then turning the creaking 
water wheel and the little sandpiper was running as 
merrily at the water's edge. Not until we come to the 
realms of the soul's life do we find the pidures shifting 
into realms unfamiliar, drawing about them the mi^s 
and my^eries of old Egypt's religious beliefs. Down 
the long corridors' ^eep inclines and into the dark 
chambers' darkness these solemn my^eries accompany 
the visitor. Strange, all very Grange, until there shines 
forth from the gloom of one wall, one illuminating 
word " Beloved! " —kinship is e^ablished again. 

That one word of endearment, that tender human 
call, seems to soften the severe lines on the faces of the 
Pharaoh, to bring light to their ^ony eyes, and to 
part their long closed lips with smiles. That " Beloved 
one" tells of an earthly felicity broken, some paradise 
on the Nile's banks left, like the temples with a broken 
arch at its entrance; but unlike the temple's broken 
arch this tender human call spans the centuries with 
an undefaced beauty! 

Notwith^anding there are some who wish that the 
intent of the royal builders of these wonderful tombs had 
76 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

been made good to them, and that the royal mummied 
people had slept on through longer centuries with their 
my^ery and tradition about them, yet there is no more 
intere^ing Story than that of the finding of the tombs of the 
Kings so long hidden in this valley fatness, and of their 
going forth to their late^ Nile voyage. Rapacity, — that 
old offender of law, raised the ill wind that blew good to 
the ardent Egyptologies who in 1871 were uncovering 
buried Egypt. There was a family secret in the family 
of one Abd-er-Rasoul shared in by the dwellers of the 
plain only to the extent that made them loyal; and this 
not because the secret was a mine of gold to the 
Rasoul family but because they would not have the 
heathen Granger carry away their Pharaohs. Piece 
by piece they might take them, sell them to the 
Granger but this Granger should not possess the whole 
mummied treasure. For a time neither the persuasion 
of offered gold, neither punishment of law induced the 
possessors of the secret to divulge it; but in the end 
gold induced one of the brothers to turn traitor and 
for the "few pieces of silver" the great Pharaohs were 
sold. How from the vandalism of their own degenerate 
children, the Granger rescued them, is a weird and 
venturesome ^ory. 

Not piece by piece, dive^ed of their royal insignia 
did these royal ones come forth into the light of day, but in 
perfedion of mummied arti^ry. It was Mr. Brugsch Bey 
and his ^aff of helpers that had hurried from the Biilak 

77 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

Museum to meet the traitor Mohammed Abd-er-Rasoul 
among the rocky heights above Der-el-Bahari and 
there to make that memorial descent through shafts 
and passage-ways ^rewn with burial treasures, to a 
mortuary chamber filled from floor to roof with the 
royal dead. What ^ore house was this his torches' light 
revealed? 

Such had not been the royal will of Seti I, of 
his great son Rameses, neither of his son Rameses 
III, nor yet of the fair Queen Nefertari, and yet these 
and their royal kinsfolk lay helpless with only the gold 
and blue sheen of their coffins between them and the 
Granger's hand. 

No wonder that Brugsch Bey was well nigh 
overcome as he Sood in the presence of two score of 
these whose eyes seemed to look ^raight into his from 
their vividly pidured faces and whose hands seemed 
ready to emerge from their ages' confine in a reach 
toward his, — no wonder! 

Outside the day was passing and the Granger 
feared the wrath of lurking spies. A great secret 
was his, and the fearsome queSion he asked himself 
was, would he be able to give to the world the 
marvelous contents of this tomb of Her-Hor? He it 
was who as prie^-king had reigned so royally during 
the twenty-fir^ dyna^y in "The City of a Hundred 
Gates", and had there made that prieitly vow to 
protedl the great family of the Rameses which he had 
78 




«lJiF:i«i«i 



• t 



i'ffSSr 



*• kA— 













«». 




UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

believed to fulfill when he carried their mummied forms 
from their own threatened tombs to the safer refuge 
of his own. But now, in a century of enlightenment 
his tomb was invaded in the cause of, and spirit of 
knowledge, and from fir^ to la^ yielded up seven 
centuries of Egypt's illu^rious dead! 

To ^and before these (the olde^ bearing date 
2233 B. C.) in the Bulak Museum to-day is to underhand 
full well the feeling of Mr. Brugsch Bey when he 
turned away from the sight of them to seek the 
open air. 

The conqueror of Ethiopia, of Syria, the 
greater warrior of their race lay dead among 
them. He, Thothmes III, might not raise his arm 
againil the nineteenth century invader; nor yet the 
conqueror of the Khiti now achieve a vidlory over one 
man only. So, alike subservient to the will of this 
one living man all these old conquerors, shackled in 
the chains of Death, came forth to re-travel the 
valley-way, re-cross the Theban plain and be embarked 
for their Grange voyage down their loved river. 

Brugsch Bey's own description of his six days' and 
nights' work in the emptying of the Her-Hor tomb is 
as pathetic as tragic, scarcely needing the "little 
imagination" which he sugge^s. He says, "I shall never 
forget the scenes I witnessed, when, landing at the 
mouth of the Der-el-Bahari shaft, I watched the Grange 
train of helpers while they carried across the hi^orical 

79 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

plain the bodies of the very kings who had conSruded 
the very temples ^ill landing, and of the very prices 
who had officiated in them; the temple of Hatasor 
nearer, away across from it, Karnak; further to the 
right the Ramesseum, where the great granite monolith 
lies face to the ground; further south, Medinet 
Habu; midway between, Der-el-Medinet; and then the 
two colossi, the vocal Memnon and his companion; and 
then beyond all, more view of the plain; then the blue 
of the Nile and the Arabian hills far to the ea^; while 
slowly moving down the cliffs and across the plain, or 
in the boats crossing the Nile flood were the sullen 
laborers carrying their ancient burdens. As the Red 
Sea opened and allowed Israel to pass, so opened the 
silence of the Theban plain and allowed the royal 
funeral procession to pass, and then — all was hushed 
again. Go up to Der-el-Bahari, and with a little 
imagination you will see it all spread out before 
you" — Go! 

Not less ^riking to the imagination were the scenes 
of lamentation that the natives made at the parting with 
their Pharaohs. Mr. Hardwicke D. Rawnsley, in 
his "Notes for the Nile" says that Mr. Brugsch Bey 
told him that "one of the moS ^riking things in the 
whole journey to his mind, was the way in which there 
arose from all the Land of Egypt 'an exceeding bitter 
cry ' , and women wailing and tearing their hair, men casing 
du^ above their heads, came crowding from the villages 
80 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

on the banks, to make lamentation for Pharaoh. Yes, the 
whole heart of Egypt and the old love for the mighty kings 
of the splendid days of old, was deeply moved, and, as 
in the days more than three thousand years ago, with 
wailing and great weeping, the funeral barge had carried 
the dead kings up the Nile to their sleep among the 
Theban hills; so to-day, with wailing and weepmg and 
gnashing of teeth, and all the signs of national 
lamentation, did the bodies of the mighty Pharaohs 
sail swiftly down through a land of mourning and 
sorrow, from their long repose in the Theban valley of 
the dead, to their final reS at Cairo beside the shining 
Nile." 

The impressive ceremony of the unwrapping of 
the royal mummies of Rameses II, and Rameses III 
was condudled by M. Ga^in Maspero in the presence 
of a di^inguished company at the Bulak Museum in 
1886. The wrapping of the royal body of the Great 
Rameses that had been done at such expense of time 
and with such perfection of funeral art three thousand 
one hundred and eighty-six years gone, was on that 
June day of — 86 removed layer by layer,— marvelous 
wrapping — in one short quarter of an hour! 

The official records of this la^ despoiling of the 
Pharaohs read hardly more acceptable than that detailed 
confession by the vandal despoiler of the Great Rameses 
that is recorded in the Amher^ papyrus. The robber 
and despoiler confessed, "We found the auguit king with 

81 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

his divine axe beside him, and his amulets and ornaments 
of gold about his neck; his head was covered with 
gold, and his auguS person was entirely covered with 
gold; his coffin was overlaid with gold and silver within 
and without, and incrufted with all kinds of precious 
Sones. We took the gold which we found upon the 
sacred person of this god as also his amulets and 
ornaments which were about his neck, and the coffins 
in which he reposed". And so it was that these men 
of scientific research found only what the robber 
considered valueless. How little did he know! 

In the less elaborate Osirian coffin that for some 
centuries following, held the royal mummy of Rameses 
II, — without special insignia of honor or marks of love — the 
great chief made his several pilgrimages from tomb to 
tomb. Fir^, says the "Abbott"— papyrus, Rameses II was 
carried to the tomb of his father Seti I, but in no long 
time the prieft-guardians fearing for his safety, he and his 
father were carried to the tomb of Queen Ansera— she 
of the eighteenth dynafty — and there believed to have 
been left in safety. But no, tomb-robbers were ^ill 
following the greatest of their prey, and again hoping 
for a securer refuge, he was left in the tomb of 
Amenophis I— of the eighteenth dynaSy, whose House 
of Eternity bore the date 1635 B. C. Here for six years 
only the great Pharaoh was at re^, and then back again 
to the tomb of his father, to be sent forth again and 
hidden away in the vault of the Her-Hor family at 

82 




^»^^ 






UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

Der-el-Bahari, there to lie with his own long line of 
royal refugees until that Arab-Judas sold for silver the 
knowledge of this la^ hiding and from which he went 
forth at the call of the Granger. 



83 



£SITO^^. OF MEDINET ABU (INTERIOR) 




(HOI513TMI) uaA TamaaM io 3jsm3t 





E5NA— EDFU— KOM OMBOS 



- "n fTii I r " Wr jji f 





ESNA— EDFU— KOM OMBOS 

HAVING behind the va^ly impressive ruins 
of Kamak, the lonely site of the silent 
Memnon, and the lonelier windings of the 
solemn valley among the wind-swept hills, the 
river leads on in unchanging gray towards 
its fir^ cataradt. Nowhere else will be found so 
rich a field of ruin-treasure and nowhere else will the 
sun shine with more vivifying effed into roofless 
courts and colonnaded halls than on the plain of 
Thebes, Nowhere. 

It is a late date that we read on the site of 
the "Heliopolis of the South" — at Armant — only fifty-one 
B. C. How young, how changed; Ammon Ra 
dethroned, Apollo and Jupiter worshipped. Another 
false note — as in the Luxor temple— un-Egyptian, — but 
the river has to carry us only a tone's throw farther to 
set us back again to the days of the Early Empire, — this 
at Gebeten, the site of a pre-dynaSic city. The site of 
yet another of the old Time-effaced cities is found at 
Asfun-al-Matana, these two and we come to moorings 
under the Seepish bank at Esna. Surrounded by 
Egyptian poverty, sunk deep down in its sunless grave 
the Temple of Esna is no sharer in the better fortune 

87 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

of her si^er temples. Their roofless courts and galleries 
are handsomely dowered with the sun's be^ gold, with 
the moon's pure^ silver. Their lotus-budded columns 
make a sort of formal garden above the ^ony 
courts, and on the farther blue of the sky the ^ars 
outline the zodiac's signs. No, the fate of those temple 
ruins which lie pro^rate in the sands seem happy 
indeed to that of Esna in her both earth and roof 
imprisonment. 

Far, far down — deeper than the Nile's bottom, lie 
the foundations of that earlier temple above which this 
one was to the glory of the god Khnum built. 

Later came the Roman emperors with their 
extensions and embellishments. Safely hidden away 
under the well preserved cornice are the names of two 
of these, Claudius and Vespasian. How well the 
Roman emperors loved to associate themselves with 
Egypt's peculiar beliefs and cufloms is recorded on 
many a temple wall. Here at Esna the Emperor 
Commodus had himself represented assi^ing the 
ram-headed Khnum and the god Horus in drawing 
a net filled with fish and water-fowl; while the 
ibis-headed Thout looks on approvingly. 

Then there is the imperial Decius, sacrificing to the 
glory of the god Khnum. We read that this imperial 
name was the laft of the many imperial names ever 
sculptured on an Egyptian temple. 

Standing on the present level of the ^reet, or narrow 
88 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

pathway, the handsome capitals supporting the cornice 
are almost within touch. Twenty-four of these, variously 
inscribed support the portico and frame in a mo^ 
interesting representation of the Zodiac. The two 
views to be had of the Esna temple are both interior, the 
fir^ looking down into it, the second looking up but 
not out of it, as one walks through its low sunken 
courts. Ah, poor Esna to be so defined. 

Again the river leads on and pa^ effaced cities 
and some more or less intere^ing tombs. It were 
better to say all the tombs of Egypt are intere^ing; it 
is the comparison between the marvelous ones in the 
great Valley and the less marvelous elsewhere that 
permits of the "more or less" expression. The names 
of Thothmes IV, Amenhetep 111, of Seti I, Rameses II, and 
III, of Ptolemy IX, and Ewergetes II, are to be repeated 
over and about the ^ill visible ruins of the ancient 
Eileithyias— or the now simple name Al-Kab. This 
we leave on the ea^ bank and look away until there 
rises in lately magnificence the towers of the beautiful 

Temple of Edfu. 

After sunless Esna, the wholly-open-to-the-sun, the 
spaciousness, of the courts and galleries gave to Edfu a 
very real and loveable personality. Did the young god 
Horus entail his own never-aging sovereignty on this 
beil preserved of Egyptian temples?— for barring the 
marks of defacement of early Chri^ian vandalism, the 
two thousand years of life have left few marks on this 

89 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

lovely Horus temple. The great pylons are crowded with 
battle scenes, the splendid columns (thirty-two) run side 
by side with equally splendid courts and galleries, and the 
fairways are richly embellished with kingly and prie^ly 
processions. Through the broken roof of the Sandtuary the 
sun falls with delicious warmth upon the Horus-consecrated 
shrine, and from the Pylon's high top it fairly glorifies the 
diSant desert mountains ! Palms and mimosa, fields emerald 
with their heavy crops, sheep and goat herds, camels and 
their makers, villages fringed about with women and 
children in their corn-flower-blue gowns, and pa^ them all 
in its silent, somber flow, the Nile. This pidure wall remain 
long after the great towers of the Temple of Horus at 

Edfu have gone beyond the horizon. 

***** 

One more temple marks the Nile valley and 
the traveler finds himself before that one so often 
called the "bijou" of Egyptian temple architedure, — 
the Kiosk, — at Philae. Mecca though that Philae is to 
every Nile traveler, he would not pass Kom Ombos by. It 
is part of a true Nile pidure, landing on a height 
that commands not only a far reaching view of the Nile 
valley but the farther away routes into Nubia. 

It is among the pleasant experiences of temple 
visiting that, always excepting kingly Kamak, every 
ruin appears as intere^ing if not as great as the one 
laft seen. Not that it really is so, but looking at 
Kom Ombos ilanding on its high plateau we say it 
90 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

is one of the moil charming ruins on the Nile; and 
in the days of the eighteenth dynasty monarchs mu^ 
have been a temple, or temples, of ftriking beauty. 

We like this Nile pidlure, like the much-ruined 
ruin that it is, and do not find it easy to associate 
the de^inies of so charming a temple with the 
uncharming crocodile-headed Sobk. However, this 
ugly ruler had good ta^e in choosing for associates the 
gentle Hathor, and the young Khons-Hor, god of 
the moon and of her beauty-enhancing light. The 
crocodile-headed god has lo^ his scepter but not so 
the moon-god, for it is hereabouts that the god and 
his lunar queen transform their world into a magic sort 
of beauty-poetic in its harmony with the silence! 

The coloring of one of the reliefs — that of 
Tiberius — where the Emperor is making offerings to 
the beautiful lady of Ombos, is mo^ wonderfully 
preserved, as are also the column-reliefs in the fir^ 
hall of the Great Temple. Then there are ^ar-gods 
with goddesses in the heavenly boats, and lovely 
Isis, Nephthys, Shu, Maat, Nut; and no wall column or 
facade is without its decoration repeating the legends and 
beliefs of the royal temple builders. Father Nile has not 
been kind to the smaller of the Ombos' temples, having 
when in flood from year to year, taken large tribute 
of it, until the greater part fared worse than to have 
been covered by the warm, beneficent sands. 
"Its myitic glory swept away." 

* dfi * * * 

91 



PHIL/E 




PHIL/E 

jHOSE golden sands that come so far on 
the wings of the wind to fill up the seams 
of the broken sand^one cliffs along the 
Nile-way, are ^ill among the beauty-enhancing 
features round about the Fir^ Catarad, although 
the rock so roundly moulded, so black and gli^ening, so 
novel a feature in the river's channel, divide our 
admiration. In the sky there is a possible clearer 
clearness by day, and at night only that change which 
comes with the varying light of the young, the full and 
of the waning moon; after which the blue firmament 
belongs to the ^ars alone! 

"Silvery" — "pearly", are much used expressions in 
the not-to-be-expressed effed of the night's light upon the 
always Grange panorama. It mu^ be seen! Looking 
up into such a firmament and then out over such a 
panorama, the vision-like pidture is charming beyond 
description and simulating to the imagination. It is 
then easy to believe that the Sars have marked well 
the difference between the life To-day and YeSerday 
of the island of Philae; and that their seeming emotional 
trembling is for the fate that has overtaken the lovely 
temples. Their deSiny was entered upon under the 

95 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

sandion of gods and kings; and the ^ars looked on 
approvingly. What befell that these con^ant ^ars lo^ 
control? 

At Edfu the Temple of Horus ^ands in Wrongly 
contra^ing perfedtness-of-ruin; and Kom Ombos, so much 
less dowered, ^ill commands the river and valley routes 
that lead to its courts, from its secure hill-site. These 
are neighbors of Philae; their entered-upon-de^iny not 
greater and yet their paved courts and halls and their 
ivory-colored colonnades v^ear unchanged their old time 
likeness. Where then is Philae? 

If the wherefore of so radical a difference in the 
fate of these neighboring temples was not written in the 
^ars, it is now plainly enough to be traced along the 
flow of the Nile. Philae was unfortunately situated for 
her later-day life; this the ^ars did not foretell, and 
had they so foretold, could the builders of her temples 
have underwood the law of necessity under which was 
achieved that modern wonder of engineering, the Great 
Dam? No, the beit of the old a^rologers could not 
have read this in any of the myriad ^ars that ranged 
themselves as allies to the gods. 

It is for more than a hundred miles that this Great 
Dam keeps the country in flood. Islands and banks that 
once bore a wealth of palms, of mimosa, of sycamore 
are submerged, their beauty of outline, their natural life 
gone. The palms that gave a very special grace to the 
whole rocky framework are slowly drowning; the purple 
96 



t- 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

mountains look less purple, and the whole panorama 
wears harder lines without the softening influence of the 
feathery green. 

The delicate features of the Temple of Isis 
and those not less delicate of the lovely Kiosk are 
now submerged, without so much as a reflected 
beauty-of-them, in the muddy waters. Whatever of 
pathos there is in the pilgrim's cry of regret among 
Egypt's temple ruins, it mu^ get its loudeil echo from 
the water-entombed temples of Philae. 

The measurements of the Temple of Isis do not 
give it rank among Egypt's greater, and yet it has 
never looked small either on its former foundation or 
now in its submergence; and now, perhaps more than 
ever, its exquisite lightness of architedural proportions 
saves it from an appearance of sinkmg into the water, but 
rather gives the effed of, Venus-like to be rising from it. 

The approach to both temples is now quite 
colorless; no green, feathery banks lead from the landing 
into exquisite courts and many angled colonnades, but 
over the somber, tideless sea of water the rowers 
send their boat fir^ through the very heart of 
the "bijou" Temple, and on into the face of the 
Temple of Isis. Alas! 

The covering of the foundations serves to dwarf 
the two propylon towers, — twins in loveliness— that 
once ^ood so proudly high holding aloft their colossal 
sculptures. Without fringe of green at their base 

97 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

these towers and their pidure galleries look harder, colder 
than they used, and yet they are moS beautiful. The 
sun will never allow these out-door galleries to be really 
hard or cold. 

The portrait of the goddess Isis, — the Lady of 
Philae— is said to be featured like to one of the two 
Cleopatras, wives of Ptolemy Physcon. However 
the alien-featured breaks the rhythm of Egyptian 
myfticism, fortunately the false note soon passes and at 
the Isis temple it did not enter the inner court nor dare so 
much as pass the Hathor-headed columns by. The visitor 
ilands at the water's level, looks about, — defacement 
everywhere — looks up and there, toward the farther blue 
of the sky, there, close above a very garden of lotus 
bud and bloom the color of a remaining roof glows 
in all its unspoiled beauty! Familiar as one may feel 
to be with the beft, as well as the wor^, that Egypt's 
temples hold, it is not possible to feel the charm 
conveyed by such a grouping of palms, papyrus, lotus 
until one ^ands in such a garden of them as this 
that blooms under the azure of this one portico. The 
opening in the roof lets ju^ enough of heaven's blue 
to enhance that of the portico and make of it that 
immortal color which, once seen, remains a pure delight 
always. 

It is a worn fairway that goes up pa^ this temple 
garden to the roof where the sun is warming the 
mammoth itones. Below is a small room sacred to 
98 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

Osiris, the whole Osirian legend beautifully sculptured 
upon the walls, — an exceedingly intere^ing set of 
reliefs— a sort of love legend, setting forth the death of 
the god of the dead, the tender mini^rations of Isis and 
how Horus revenged his father. The god Set, — the 
god of darkness— assi^ed by his si^er Nephthys who 
was also his wife — conspired and induced the great 
Osiris to leave a fea^ and enter a box which they quickly 
closed and threw into the Nile. Then it was that 
the "Tears of Isis"* flowed in deep silence between its 
banks and for long kept the tragic secret; but the 
faithful Isis was to be rewarded. She found the body 
of her lord, — floated out upon the dry sand — whereupon 
she and her son hid it away; but not content was the 
ever evil Set who again found the body of the god and 
tossed it in smaller pieces to the winds. The love of 
Isis was omnipotent in its power and gathering each 
fragment of her lord's body she gave to each a special 
sepulcher, thus defying any further efforts of the 
would-be-deftroyer. Osiris was not dead but was from 
henceforth to be the great god of the dead with an 
e^ablished kingdom in the world of the dead. And thus 
love triumphed, the conquered made conqueror. Isis in 
this trinity was the beautiful dawn and Horus the "young 
sun"— the faireS allies of the Egyptian day. In another 
small chamber of this Isis temple is a pretty ^ory 
of foSering care given by the goddess mother Hathor 

*The Nile. 

99 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

to the splendid young god Horus. He sowed the land 
with seed of future crops, in honor of the goddess, while 
to the gentle mother he gave a jewelled collar to take 
the place of his encircling arms. 

From the roof, where the sun is warming the 
great uneven ^ones, one looks dov^oi upon the 
roofless, foundationless columns of the yet lovely 
Kiosk, sinking, rising, alone and as apart as the colossi 
on the Theban plain. Not farther removed, but neither 
rising nor sinking, are fixed mid-^ream those curious 
gigantic rocks that rise like unhewn temples whose 
foundations are the earth's foundations. Mountains are 
tossed up from the underworld and, like these that close 
in the far circling panorama about Philae, are softened 
by Nature's hand of grace, but not so these unhewn 
temple rocks that are without sand or shrub, or vine 
or waving palm to soften their hardness. 

Modern hiSory is fa^ being made about Philae. The 
quarries are again hearing the sound of the builders, yet, 
whatever the building of these kings-of-science of this 
twentieth century, and maybe they will rebuild the 
Philae temples on some other islands! — they surely Will 
not ^ir from its foundations that one great orange-red 
monolith of granite about whose base prehi^oric floods 
have washed, and on whose polished sides prie^s 
and conquerors have written their records of prayer, of 
vidlory — and commoner folk have inscribed it with 
their signs of admiration and adoration? This great 
100 




t i » 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

rock is "Pharaoh's throne". Let it be a witness 
forever to the unchangeableness of some of God's work 
in the land of Egypt. 

"By Him who sleeps in Philae" this is indeed 
Egypt's Mecca. 



101 



THE ROCK TEMPLES OF ABU SIMBAL 




THE ROCK TEMPLES OF ABU SIMBAL 

iNDER the skies of the Southern Cross there 

is a brightening of the firmament, the moon, the 

^ars and all the "ho^s-of-the-blue" increase 

their lu^er, grow so white in their silver light 

that under it the brown and yellow sands of 

the mountainous desert lose their splendid coloring, are 

transformed into a mellow whiteness that in turn 

transforms the Oriental into an Ardic landscape. This 

moonlight transformation is truly magical. 

It was under the skies of the Southern Cross 

that the great temple-builder of Egypt sought 

and found a new and unique setting for yet two 

other temples. Had he tired of the level plains at 

Heliopolis, Abydos, Memphis, Thebes that he should 

"spy out", in the land of Nubia, a mountainous rock 

with gliftening sands falling like golden hair about its 

face, the which should make an ideal and wholly unique 

temple site? Heretofore the great Rameses had builded 

on the plains, on the Nile's gentler banks, but in far 

away Nubia the plains were beyond the encircling 

mountains and the Nile's banks crowded hard again^ 

them. 

105 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

One of these sand-embedded, sand-crowned mountains 
looked full into the face of the morning sun, had the 
young Sun-god for its god and had a great rocky heart 
waiting to respond to a call to life. It was to the heart 
of this mountain of splendid proportions that Rameses II 
gave the throb of life by setting up altar and shrine, and 
carving about them in completeil maje^y the great 
Temple of Abu Simbal. 

Neither this nor the lesser Temple of Hathor 
had pylon or obelisk, or sphinx avenue to greaten their 
approach; neither have they to-day those roofless courts 
and uncrowned colonnaded halls wherein the visitor 
will be, as at Karnak, Luxor, — everywhere — welcomed 
by the Sun. But in the place of these the golden 
sands come pouring round about the lately portals 
of these Grange temples in a glory of warmth and 
color, of richness and softness that gives to them a 
charm of tenderer quality than that of dignity. 

Here, a long way removed from her si^er temples 
of Lower Egypt, alone in her mountain flronghold the 
Temple of Abu Simbal did, — and does outrank all the 
temples of the Nile in grandeur of solitude. Hewn 
deep into the gigantic rock the shadows and 
the gloom of the interior give ^rangely imposing 
proportions to the architecture and make of the 
whole a very harmonious shrine for the god of the 
Under-world. 

The great Hypo^yle Hall of this rock temple 
106 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

wears no likeness to the colonnaded courts that roofless 
and sun-full are so delightfully familiar in Egypt; and 
in^ead of that almo^ airiness of architedural effedls 
given by the Sun— the Sun! the light, and all the 
necromancing atmosphere to the uncovered temples, there 
is at Abu Simbal a concentration of effeds solid, ^ationary 
and almo^ oppressive with the added weight of its own 
gloom. 

The size and solidity of the eight colossal columns 
that support the mountain's weight and leave a roof 
between, seem greatly augmented by the gigantic 
Osiris-figures that ^and close again^ them, and yet 
the light from the door reaches through this great hall 
with such happy effedl that it is both arti^ically and 
impressively beautiful. 

The sculpturing on the side walls is full of spirit 
and the coloring brilliant. No part of Rameses' record 
of vidory — that same wonderful vidory over the Hittites 
to be read of at Karnak, Luxor, the Ramesseum and 
Abydos, — has lo^ any of its coloring on the darkest of 
temple walls; and, as though to prove his right to 
reward for so much prowess, he has here commemorated 
his marriage to the daughter of the Hittite king after 
he had made them both captive. An almo^ childlike 
portraiture this of subjeds too aged to wake our 
enthusiasm or move our pity, and so we delight more 
in the walls' charming art than in the hi^orical fads. 

Eight small chambers, the smaller Hypo^yle 

107 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

Hall, the Transverse chamber and the Sanduary 
reach far into the mountain's darkness, where beside 
the altar, in the utmoS gloom sit waiting and watching 
the gods of light, and the deified king. Even into this 
blackness of darkness the kings would go in company 
with the gods of light — with Ammon, the Great 
Sun-god, with Harmachis the Young Sun-god, and 
with Ptah, but not even in the sometimes sun-filled 
great Hypo^yle Hall would he consort with Osiris. 

It was outside, in the full face of the Sun, that 
Rameses dismissing all gods, eleded to enthrone himself 
alone. As in a great high backed lately sort of seat 
he sits — four colossal ftatues of him, guarding the 
temple door. Is it the goodly promise that is so 
beautifully sculptured in the cornice above — "I give to 
thee all life and ^rength" — that has changed the ^ony 
countenance of one of these colossi and given it a smiling 
benignity? 

The seat-like appearance of the facade of Abu 
Simbal is produced by building the two sand-protedting 
walls at either side. Fortunately these walls do not 
dwarf the four colossal ^atues, whose seventy feet 
from base to crown measure harmoniously with the 
mountainous background and in so doing sugge^ the 
thought that only a monarch who never undervalued 
himself would have had the daring to seat himself 
again^ one of Egypt's mountains and ^ill look "Rameses 
the Great". 
108 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

Across the valley of the golden avalanches of sand 
that separates without separating this greater temple 
from its consort, the "smiling Rameses" may see how 
worthily he grouped, at the lesser temple's door, his 
royal family about him. The facade of the Hathor 
temple is, as it were, a pylon in bondage; never freed 
from the mountain again^ which its wide receding 
form re^s. And again the likeness to pylon architedture 
was curiously departed from by carving out from the 
face of it deep recesses massively buttressed with 
^one. From these six recesses the colossal figures of 
Rameses and his queen, — three on either side the 
doorway, — walk with that noble and graceful bearing 
which sugge^s their being the chief personages in a 
royal procession that will shortly follow them out and 
across that valley of golden sand to join in the ceremonies 
of the "House of Ra". 

Outside all this; inside the grace of simplicity. Six 
square columns, the head of Hathor many times repeated, 
sculpturing in bas-relief, the Hypo^le Hall, the Transverse 
Chamber, some lesser and unfinished chambers, and above 
them from its security in the architraves issues the voice of 
the king saying, "Rameses, the Strong in Truth, the 
Beloved of Ammon, made this divine Abode for his 
royal wife, Nefret-ere, whom he loves" — and— "his 
royal wife who loves him, Nefret-ere, the Beloved of 
Maut, con^ruded for him this Abode in the mountain 
of Pure Waters". 

109 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

Since the name Nefret-ere signifies Good, Perfedl, 
Beautiful in Companionship, it was fitting that Rameses 
should have dedicated this temple of modeS mien to 
the fair and gentle queen "whom he loves" and also 
to have associated with her the supreme^ type of 
woman, — Hathor, the goddess of divine maternity. 

Whether in the several pleasingly fair portraits of 
queen Nefret-ere her personal beauty has been enhanced 
by idealizing it, giving it the sweetness and grace of 
the divine type represented by the goddess-mother, the 
legend does not say, but certain it is her portraits in 
the Hathor temple, make good her right to her name's 
significance. 

As out from the shadows of one of the tombs in 
the great Valley there floats the refrain of a tender 
human love — "Beloved"! — so from the mountain-hid 
shrine of Hathor the old love song — "whom he 
loves" — "who loves him" — floats out and across the 
golden sand valley of the Abu Simbal temples; out and 
on upon the waters that bear the Keener into the 
farther reach of this Land of Gold! 



no 



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^ f-y^mm 




\ 



ADIEU 





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ADIEU 

slTH the Rock Temples of Abu Simbal the 
Nile's temple-pilgrimage ends. 

Farther south the Southern Cross joins 
the "con^ellated ho^s" of the sky in their 
early morning watch over the foamy waters 
Second Catarad. Not in bondage, like the 
waters of the Fir^ Catarad, are these of the Second, but 
right gladsomely they come from that almo^ wilderness 
world where in the Blue Nile and the White have 
met, and here, before they take to the river's sober 
flow they make the mo^ of their free play among the 
big and little boulders that beset the channel. Gli^ening 
in their purple-black beauty these catarad rocks are in 
sharp contra^ to the va^ Wretches of golden sand that 
like a wind swept sea of amber, rolls over the plains 
of the Lybian desert. 

Down at the Fir^ Catarad— so tame, so spiritless 
now — the whole landscape has its finality within the 
embrace of circling mountains, but here, at the 
Second, from the rocky height of Abooseer, it seems 
to be without finality. Splendid beyond compare is 

113 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

the panorama that is only to be seen from the top of 
this great cathedral-like rock. At its feet lie the beauty 
rocks of the wide-spreading, foaming water way with 
islets interspersed — islets desolate and brown, islets fresh 
with green. Again^ its rocky sides the gold sand 
breaks in its cataradl roll and fall, and from its 
overhanging top the view reaches to where sky and 
earth meet — 

"How long they kiss!" 

This sky and these quiet desert lands! 
It is not that the Rock of Abooseer is really great in 
height, but it is so immeasurably higher than the 
ridges and cliffs that lead up to it, so dominating in the 
landscape that it seems so; and therefore to be lifted 
up by it, above the small and inconsiderable features 
about, is to see them from the vantage point of — in 
Egypt — a great height. The atmosphere is brilliantly 
transparent, no miriness or cloud shadows to dim the 
entrance to the countless valleys of sand that comes 
rolling through openings in ^ony mountain wa^es. No 
hindrance is there to catching bits of the gleaming Nile 
as it winds Northward through the undulating Lybian 
plain; nor any hindrance to watching the phantom-like 
forms of two twin mountains that lean again^ the warm 
skies of the Soudan — 

"A laS remains of sunset * * burned 

* * * like a torch * * " 

In one long Hare of crimson. 
114 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

When again, there come into view the ^ony 
amber cliffs that mark 

— "the site once of a city great and gay, 
(So they say)" — 
Steps led up the cliffs' front once, and once a wall 

"Shut them in"- 
from a world, possibly as inconsiderable as that of the 
little Wady Haifa village across the river. 

The apex of that pyramid of green whose base 
is so broadly planted at the delta, has, at the Second 
Cataradt, come in touch with the joyous, far traveling 
waters and with them will, with sometimes more, sometimes 
less display of ^rength, retravel the whole thousand miles 
to the sea. 

The pilgrimage that has been made over the various 
fields of "cloth of gold" has come to its end in the golden 
Land of Nubia. 

The route has not been bordered with royal ensigns 
or feSooned with ma^s, neither have religious fea^s and 
fe^ivals made ceremonious the temple visiting. None 
of these things, but, everywhere that "triumph 
over decay" which gives to the ruins of Egypt the 
qualities of greatness. For what ruin of Egypt has 
not — *" magnificence in decay— a symmetry broken but 
not de^royed, a touch of delicate art and workmanship 
to quicken the imagination and evoke the gho^s of beauty 
haunting her ancient habitations?" And too, Egypt's 

*Henry Van Dyke. 

115 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

ruins have— "a very clear connedion w^ith the greatness and 
glory of the pa^, with some fine human achievement, vv^ith 
some heroism of men dead and gone; and la^ of all, a spirit 
of my^ery, the secret of some unexplained cata^rophe, the 
loit link of a ^ory never to be fully told". 

To turn back, therefore, and take our way to all 
this again is to live it all over again, to 

"Break the rosary in a pearly rain, 
And gather what we let fall." 

Again to watch the far rolling, the my^eriously 
shifting hills of the desert; again to penetrate into the 
strangeness of valleys and plains, again to watch the 
old river's mirthless flow; again to feel the inspiration 
and the charm of the days and the nights! To live 
this all over again is the happy chance that the return 
voyage gives. 

Soon the "Land of Ethiopia" of the Greeks with 
its wide desolate plains, its curiously rounded hills — more 
green than golden — will be passing by. And when these 
are gone the old familiar hills will come slowly creeping 
across the plain to their home beside the river again; yet 
not in unbroken ranks, but as though they would cling 
to the plain. Here and there they form Grange, almo^ 
grotesque groups; black, catarad-like ^ones crown their 
summits or roll down their pyramidial slopes— desolation 
of desolation — no life — 

— "nothing throve; 
* * — a burr had been a treasure trove." 
116 




-i»?*^ 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

and yet the very boundlessness of the desolation gives 
to all this region a profound magnificence. The sun 
does not desert it, neither the winds, nor yet is it left 
without its dower rights in Egypt's skies. 

When the sun shall have passed over the lonely 
peak of the mountains of the Sun, and looked in at 
the portals of the Rock-hewn temples of Abu Simbal, he 
will go out upon the sandy plains again to there renew 
his guardianship over all that is left of the temples of 
which in the days of the Prince of Kosh rivaled those 
of Lower Egypt. 

Wherein failed the guardianship of the great Ra 
and of the ever young Harmachis that we shall find 
only here and there a fallen column, a lovely capital, a 
pylons foundation, — nothing warranting the name's claim 
that this is the "Temple of Rameses in the House of 
Ra?" And yet in all Egypt, Upper and Lower, there 
is no temple ruin so complete that it might not be called 
the "House of Ra" — for no court is so small that the 
Sun-god does not set up his throne within, no wall so 
broken that he does not lean his scepter again^ it. 

As the red granite hills of Nubia begin to fade 
in the di^ance those of the golden brown take their 
place. The green fields broaden again and again the 
Shaduf men and the blindfolded oxen are at work 
between the thirty fields and the river. Gray mud 
villages, huddled close within the confines of a palm 
grove, pigeon towers looking from a di^ance like a 

117 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

sedion of some mediaeval caSle, the camels, the goat 
and sheep herds, and the funny little donkeys, all these 
come oftener into the landscape as we drop down the 
river toward Lower Egypt. 

The winds also make more of their transforming 
powers than when they have only the nearby mountains 
to cross. The sandy plains they toss into waves, the 
water they send in dancing wavelets along the flat banks 
whereon the little sandpipers keep up their centuries of 
merry running to and fro. 

To-day the Ea^ and We^ are meeting all along 
the banks of this river-of-mercy to Egypt, and to-day the 
prophecy, that the Englishman would "plant his foot 
firmly on the Nile's banks," has come true. Protection 
is in his out^retched hand, but a burning heart of 
endurance throbs within the haughty breads of the sons 
of the Pharaohs. This the river heeds not, or, not until 
it is caught at the Fir^ Cataradl and there protedted 
again^ the use of its own free will. 

Philae again! and again the quick falling night that 
subdues the antagonisms of the days and weaves about 
them those Grange transparencies through which one 
may read any truths of Egyptian hi^ory with 
unconcern. 

Under the spell of this night-light it is easy, to 
reconcile differences, to feel the powerlessness of the 
day's experiences to di^urb; easy to like better the soft 
mazes of silver light that have taken the place of the 
118 



• I 





UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

more radiant gold, easy to feel at peace with the world 
Ejiglish or Egyptian under the gentle influence of the 
luminous half-light that has taken the place of the 
resplendent color-belted horizons. 

Standing, in this light, within the ruins of 
Karnak, looking up to where the shapely obelisk of 
Hatasu touches the blue, there comes no thought even 
so little obtrusive as that of comparison of objeds or 
methods. The night is sublime; and, the obelisk, what 
of it? Nature may easily undo the work of man's hand 
in sending into the sky the sublimed of mountain 
heights, but in Egypt these imposing obelisks, that have 
with^ood every form of Time's onslaught, are her 
sublimed miracles in flone! 

When the tall sentinels shall have wholly disappeared 
from view, then too will have gone the plain of the 
once "Hundred Gated City" gone from view as has 
beautiful Philae, and golden Nubia. The green fields 
will now be coming in greater numbers and soon the 
golden sands with all their fine, soft, glowing beauty 
will be withdrawing into the long sinuous valleys, but, the 
river so helpful, — so harmful — what of it? 

"The river which had done them — "some" — wrong 
flows on — and will — 

— "deterred no whit" — 
bearing in its flow a sound all the world likens to — the 
sound of that song-of-the-centuries whose chorus-of-deeds 
done and doing, fir^ resound through the splendid 

119 



UNDER EGYPT'S SKIES 

arches of the pylons, through the columned halls 

of temples, through and into the tomb's grim 

shadows. Through all of these and out from them 

again it comes, to sweep with a never lessening volume 

across the dumb, desert silences; down and around the 

crumbling walls of the imperial City of Mena. Ever 

toward the sea on and on resounding; — winding its way 

among the foundations of the cluSered pyramids; and 

then — by night — to pour into the likening ears of the 

omnipotently-silent Sphinx. 

The whole secret of the song! 
***** 

Dimly outlined again^ the evening sky are the 
Pyramids of Gizeh, dimly coming into view the circling 
Mokattan Hills, and dimly are the graceful minarets 
of Mohamet Ali's mosque pointing toward those 
floating "^ar-boats" that — as we come to anchor — will 
be dipping their sparkling oars into the glorious blue of 
Egypt's skies. 

"Now in the sea's red vintage melts the sun, 

As Egypt's pearl dissolved in rosy wine, — 
And Cleopatra's night drinks all. 'Tis done". 



120 



APPENDIX 



THE POEM OF PENTAUR 

ON THE 

CONQUEST OF THE KHITI BY RAMESES II 




THE POEM OF PENTAUR 

ON THE 

CONQUEST OF THE KHITI BY RAMESES II* 

JEVERAL days after that King Rameses was 
in the town Rameses Miamon. Moving 
northward he reached the border of 
Katesh; then marched onward like his 
father (Mentu,) towards Hanruta. The 
flr^ brigade of Ammon, 'that brings vidory of 
King Rameses' (accompanied him). He was nearing 
the town; then the vile chief of Cheta came; he 
gathered (forces) from the margin of the sea to the 
land of Cheta; came all the Naharina, the Airatu, the 
Masu, the Kashkash, the Kairakamasha, the Leka, 
Katuatana, Katesh, Akarita, Anaukasa, the whole 
Mashanata Hkewise, nor left he silver or gold in his 
land he Gripped it of all his treasures (which) he 
brought with him. The vile chief of Cheta, with 
many allies accompanying him, lay ambushed to 
northwe^ of (Katesh). Now King Rameses was all 
alone, no other with him, the brigade of Ammon 

* Professor Lushington's translation in the "Records of the Pail." ii p. 61. 

125 



POEM OF PENTAUR ON THE 

marching after him; the brigade (of Ra?) at the dyke 
we^ of the town Shabutuna; the brigade of Ptah in 
the centre, the brigade of Set on the border of the 
land of Amairo. Then the vile Cheta chief made 
an (advance) w^ith men and horses numerous as 
sand; they were three men on a car, they had 
joined with every champion of Cheta-land, equipped 
with all war gear, in (countless numbers); they lay in 
ambush hidden to northweft of the town Katesh; then 
they charged the brigade of Ra Harmachis in the 
centre, as they were marching on, and they were not 
prepared to fight. Foot and horse of King Rameses 
gave way before them; they then took Katesh on the 
we^em bank of Hanruta; this news was told the 
King; then he rose as Mentu, he seized his arms for 
battle; he clutched his corslet like Bar in his hour; the 
great horse that bore him, 'Vidlory in Thebes' his 
name, from the ^able of Rameses Miamon, within the 
van. The King drew himself up, he pierced the line 
of the foe, the vile Cheta; he was all alone, no other 
with him. When he advanced to survey behind him, he 
found there encircled him twenty-five hundred chariots 
topping his way out. Every champion of the vile 
Cheta and abundant land with him of Airatu, of 
Maasu, of Patasu, and of Kashkash, of Iriuna, of 
Katuatana, of Chirabu, of Akarita, Katesh, Leka, they 
were three men on a car, they made (a charge), there 
was no chief with me, no marshall, no captain of 
126 



CONQUEST OF THE KHITI BY RAMESES II 

archers, no officers; fled were my troops and horse. I 
was left alone of them to fight the foe. Then said King 
Rameses, ' What art thou, my father Ammon? what father 
denies his son? for what have I done aught without 
thee? have I not stepped or ^ayed looking to thee, not 
transgressing the decisions of thy mouth, nor passing far 
a^ray beyond my counsels? Sovran Lord of Egypt, who 
make^ to bow down the peoples that with^and thee; what 
are these Amu to thy heart? Ammon brings them low 
who know not God. Have I not made thee monuments 
very many? filled thy temple with my spoils? built thee 
a house for millions of years? given treasures to thy 
shrine? dedicated to thee all lands, enriched thy sacrifices? I 
have slain to thee thirty thousand bulls, with all wood of 
sweet scent, good incense coming from my hand. The 
making of thy court completed, I have built thee great 
towers of ^one above thy gate, groves everlaSing. I 
brought thee obelisks from Elephantine; it is I who had 
eternal ^ones carried, guiding for thee galleys on the 
sea, conveying to thee the labours of all lands. When 
was it said such happened in other time? Shame on 
him who opposes thy counsels, well be to him who 
approves thee, Ammon. What thou ha^ done is from 
a heart of love; I call on thee, my father Ammon. I 
am amid multitudes unknown, nations gathered again^ 
me; I am alone, no other with me; my foot and horse 
have left me. I called aloud to them, none of them 
heard; I cried to them. I find Ammon worth more 

127 



POEM OF PENTAUR ON THE 

than millions of soldiers, one hundred thousand cavalry, ten 
thousand brothers and sons, were they gathered all in 
one. No works of many men avail, Ammon again^ 
them, I attain that by the counsels of thy mouth, O 
Ra, not over^epping thy counsels. Lo, have I not 
done homage to the farther end of the land?' My 
cry rang unto Hermonthis; Ra heard when I called, he 
put his hand to me, I was glad; he called to me 
behind; '****** Rameses Miamon, I am 
with thee, I thy father Ra, my hand is with thee. I 
am worth to thee one hundred thousand joined in 
one; I am Sovran Lord of Vidtory, loving valour if I 
find courage, my heart overflows Math joy; all my doing 
is fulfilled. ' I am as Mentu, I shoot to the right, I seize 
on my left, like Bar in his fury again^ them; I find 
twenty-five hundred chariots, I am amid^ them, then 
were they overthrown before my ^eeds; not one of 
them found his hand to fight, their hearts shrank within 
them; their hands all dropped, they knew not how to 
shoot, they found no heart to grasp the spear; I made 
them fall into the water as fall crocodiles, they tumbled 
headlong one over another; I slew them; my pleasure 
was that none of them should look behind him, nor 
any return; whoever falls of them he mu^ not raise 
himself up. Then the vile chief of Cheta ^ood amid 
his army to see the prowess of King Rameses. The 
King was all alone, no soldiers with him, no horse, he 
turned in dread of the King. Then he made his mighty 
128 



CONQUEST OF THE KHITI BY RAMESES II 

men go in numbers, each one of them with cars, they 
brought all war harness, the chief of Airatu, the chief 
of Masu, the chief of Iriuna, the Leka, the chief of 
Tantani, the Kashkash, the chief of Kairkamash, the 
Chirabu, the allies of Cheta, all banded in one, 
twenty-five hundred chariots. Charging the mid^ of 
them fiercer than flame, I rushed upon them, I was as 
Mentu; I let my hand ta^e them in a moment's space, I 
hew at them to slay them in their seats; each one of 
them called to his fellow, saying, 'No mortal born is 
he whoso is among us. Set the mighty of Srength; Bar 
in bodily form, verily whoever comes close to him, his 
hand droops through all his frame, they know not how 
to grasp bow nor spear when they have seen him. ' 

Coming to the jundtion of roads, the King pursued 
them as a griffin. I was slaying them, none escaped me; I 
gave a call to my foot and horse, saying, ' Be firm, be 
firm in heart, my foot and horse; behold my vidtory. I 
was alone, Tum (Ammon) my support, his hand with 
me. ' Now when Menna my Squire saw me thus encircled 
by many chariots, he cowered, his heart quailed, great 
terror entered his limbs, he said to the King, ' My gracious 
Lord, Prince revered, valiant exceedingly, protedor of 
Egypt in day of battle, verily we ^and alone amid the 
foe, how make a ^and to save breath to our mouth? how 
rescue us, King Rameses, my gracious Lord? ' The King 
said to his Squire; ' Courage, courage, my Squire, I will 
pierce them as a hawk; I will slay and hew them, caSt 

129 



POEM OF PENTAUR ON THE 

them to the duft. What forsooth to thy heart are these 
Amu? Ammon brings very low them who know not 
God, who brightens not his face on millions of 
them.' King Rameses dashed into the van, then he 
pierced the foe, the caitiff Cheta, six times, one and all, he 
pierced them. I was as Bar in his season, prevailing 
over them I slew them, none escaped. Then the King 
called to his archers and cavalry, likewise to his chiefs 
who failed to fight. 'Naught profits full heart in 
you. Is there one of them who did his duty in my 
land? Had I not ^ood as Royal Ma^er, ye were 
down^ricken. I made Princes of you always. I set 
son in his father's e^ate; if any evil comes on Egypt, ye 
quit your service * * * * Whoever comes to make 
petitions I always pay regard to his claims. Never any 
Royal Ma^er did for his soldiers what King Rameses 
has done for you, I let you sit in your houses and 
your towns; ye have not performed my hefts, my 
archers and cavalry. I have given them a road to their 
cities. ***** Lq^ yg liave played cowards 
all together, not one of you ftood to aid me while I had 
to fight. Blessed be Ammon Tum, lo, I am over Egypt 
as my father Ra; there was not one of them to observe 
my commands in the land of Egypt. O noble feat! for 
consecrating images in Thebes, Ammon's city; great 
shame on that ad of my foot and horse, greater than 
to tell, for lo, I achieve my vidories; there was no 
soldier with me, no horseman; every land beholds the 
130 



CONQUEST OF THE KHITI BY RAMESES II 

path of my vidories and might. I was all alone, no 
other with me, no chiefs behind, no marshals, no captains 
of the army, no officers, all peoples saw and will tell my 
name to limits of lands unknown. If any warriors, relics 
of my hand, remain, they will turn at seeing me; if 
ten thousand of them come upon me, their feet will not 
ftand firm, they will fly; whoever would shoot ^raight 
at me, down dropped their arrows, even as they 
approached me. ' Now when my foot and horse saw, I 
was addressed as Mentu, the ftrong sword of Ra, my 
father, who was with me in time of need, he made all 
peoples as ^raw before my horses. They were marching 
one after another to the camp of eventide; they 
found all the tribes through whom I pierced ^rewn in 
carnage, whelmed amid their blood, with all brave 
lighters of Cheta-land with children and brothers of 
their chief. Morning lighted the field of Katesh; no 
space was found to tread on for their multitude. Then 
my soldiers came glorifying our names to see what was 
done, my cavalry likewise, extolling my prowess. 'What 
a goodly deed of valor! firm in heart, thou ha^ saved 
thy army, thy cavalry son of Tum, framed by his 
arms, spoiling Cheta-land by the vidorious sword. Royal 
Conqueror, none is like thee. King lighting for his ho^ 
on day of battle, thou great of heart, fir^ in the fray, thou 
recked not for all peoples banded together, thou great 
conqueror before thy army, in the face of the whole 
land. No gainsaying. Thou guarded Egypt, cha^ise^ 

131 



POEM OF PENTAUR ON THE 

lands of thy foes, thou bruised the back of the Cheta 
forever.' Then the king addressed his foot and 
horse, likewise his chiefs who failed to fight; 'Not 
well done of one of you, your leaving me alone amid the 
foe; there came no chiefs, officer or captain of ho^ 
to aid me. I fought repelling millions of tribes all 
alone. "Victory in Thebes" and "Nehrahruta" (my 
horses) they are all I found to succour me. I was all 
alone in the mid^ of foes. I will let them eat corn 
before Ra daily, when I am in my royal palace; these 
are they found in the midil of the foe, and my Marshal 
Menna my Squire, with the officers of my household who 
were near me, the witnesses of conHid who saw them 
fall before the King; with vidtorious strength he felled 
one hundred thousand all at once, by his sword of 
might.' At dawn he joined in fray of battle; he went 
terrible to fight, as a bull terrible with pointed horns he 
rose again^ them as Mentu ordering the fray, alike valiant 
in entering battle, fighting fierce as a hawk, overthrowing 
them as Sechet who send flames of fire in the face of thy 
foes; as Ra in his rising at the front of dawn, shooting 
flames upon the wicked; one man among^ them calls 
to his fellow, ' Mark, take heed, verily Sechet the mighty 
is with him; she guides his horses; her hand is with 
him.' Whoever approaches sinks to ruin; she sends 
fire to burn their limbs, they were brought to kiss the 
duS. King Rameses prevailed over them, he slew 
them, they escaped not, they were overthrov^i under his 
132 



CONQUEST OF THE KHITI BY RAMESES II 

Seeds, they were Srewn huddled in their gore. Then the 
vile Cheta Prince sent to do homage to the great name 
of King Rameses. 'Thou art Ra Harmachis, thou art 
Set mighty of Srength, son of Nut, Bar himself; thy terror 
is over Cheta-land brought low; thou haS broken the back 
of Cheta for ever and ever. ' Then came a herald bearing 
a scroll in his hand to the great name of Rameses, 'To 
soothe the heart of the King, Horus, conquering Bull, dear 
to Ma, Prince guarding thy army, valiant with the 
sword, bulwark of his troops in day of battle. King 
mighty of Srength, great Sovran, Sun powerful in 
truth, approved of Ra, mighty in vidories, Rameses 
Miamon. The servant speaks to tell the king. My 
gracious Lord, fair son of Ra Harmachis, truly thou 
art bom of Ammon, issue of his body, he gives thee 
all lands together, land of Egypt and land of Cheta, they 
offer their service beneath thy feet to thee, Ra, prevailing 
over them. Yea, thy spirit is mighty, thy Srength 
weighs heavy on Cheta-land; is it good to kill thy 
servants? thou exerciseil thy might upon them; art thou 
not softened? thou cameS yeSerday and slewed one 
hundred thousand of them; thou art come to-day 
* * * victorious King, Spirit glad in battle, grant us 
breath of life. ' Then the King rose in life and Srength 
as Mentu in his season. Then he bade summon all 
the leaders of foot and horse, his army all assembled 
in one place to let them hear the message sent by 
the great chief of Cheta to King Rameses. They 

133 



POEM OF PENTAUR 

answered, saying to the King, ''Tis very good to let 
fall thy wrath. Prince, Sovran Lord, ***** 
who can soothe thee in thy day of anger?' Then 
King Rameses gave assent to their words; he gave his 
hand in peace, returning to the South, passing in peace 
to Egypt with his chiefs, his foot and horse, in life and 
flrength, in sight of all land. Dread of his might is in 
every heart, he protecfts his army, all nations come to 
the great name, falling down and adoring his noble 
countenance. King Rameses reached fort Rameses 
Miamon great image of Ra Harmachis reposing in 
the royal palace in Thebes, as the sun's orbs, on his 
two-fold throne; Anmion hailed his form, saying, 'Glory 
to thee, son loved of us, Rameses Miamon (to whom 
we grant) fe^ivities for ever on the throne of thy father 
Turn. All lands are overthrown under his feet; he 
has quelled (all enemies). ' Written in year seven, month 
Payni, in the reign of King Rameses Miamon, giver of 
life for ever and ever like his father Ra * * * * To 
the Head Guardian of the royal writings ***** 
by the Royal Scribe Pentaur. 



134 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE 
PRINCIPAL KINGS OF EGYPT, WITH APPROXIMATE DATES. 



Fir^ Dyna^ 

Mena 

Tela 

Atet 

Ata 

Hesep-ri 4266 

Mer-bapen 4233 

Semenptah 4200 

Kebh 4166 



Second Dynafly 



Betau • 
Kakau • 
Ba-neter-en 
Uatnes . 
Senta . . 



Third Dynasty 



Tatai . . 
Nebka . 
T'er-sa 
Tela . . 
Setes 
Ra-nefer-ka 



Fourth Dyna^ 



Snefru 
Chufu 
Ra-tet-f 



Fourth Dynafty — Continued 
B. C. B, C 

4400 Cha-f-Ra 3666 

4366 Men-kau-Ra 3633 

4333 Shepseskaf 3600 

43U0 Xhe dates are those of Brugsch 

Bey, as published in "Egypt under the 

Pharaohs", ii., p. 311. 

Fifth Dyna^ 

Userkaf 3566 

Sahu-Ra 3533 

4133 Kaka 3500 

4100 Nefer-Ra 3466 

4066 Ra-en-user-An 3433 

4033 Menkau-Her 3400 

4000 Tet-ka-Ra 3366 

Unas 3333 

3966 Sixth DynaSy 

3933 User-ka-Ra 3300 

3900 Teta ......... 3266 

3866 Meri-Ra 3233 

3833 Meren-Ra 3200 

3800 Nefer-ka-Ra 3166 

Mer-en-Ra-Ment-em-Saf . .3133 

3766 Seventh to Eleventh Dyna^es 

3733 Neter-ka-Ra .3100 

3700 Men-ka-Ra 3066 

137 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 



Seventh to Eleventh Dynamics— Continued 

B.C. 

Nefer-ka-Ra 3033 

Nefer-ka-Ra Nebi .... 3000 



Tet-ka-Ra-maa-kes (?] 
Nefer-ka-Ra Chentu 
Mer-en-hler . . . 
Senefer-ka • 
Ra-en-ka .... 
Nefer-ka-Ra Tererl 
Nefer-ka-Her . . . 
Nefer-ka-Ra Pepi-senib 
Nefer-ka-Ra Annu . 

kau-Ra . 

Nefer-kau-Ra . 
Nefer-kau-Her 



2966 
.2933 

2900 
.2866 

2833 
.2800 

2766 
.2733 

2700 
.2666 

2633 
. 2600 
Neferarka-Ra 2566 



Neb-cher-Ra 
Seanchka-Ra 



2533 
2500 



Twelfth Dynafty 

Amenemha I 2466 

Usertsen I 2433 

Amenemha II 2400 

Usertsen il 2366 

Usertsen III 2333 

Amenemha III 2300 

Amenemha IV 2266 

Thirteenth to Seventeenth Dyna^es 
Here comes a break of five hundred 
years, in which the "Shepherd Kings" 
rule falls. 

Ejghteenth Dynafty 

Ahmes 1700 

Amenhetep I 1 666 



1600 



Ejghteenth Dynaily — Continued 

B.C. 

Thothmes 1 1633 

Thothmes II \ 
Thothmes III ) ' 

Amenhetep II 1566 

Thothmes IV 1533 

Amenhetep III 1500 

Her-em-heb 1466 

Heretic Kings 1 433 

Nineteenth Dynafty 

RamesesI 1400 

Setil 1366 

Rameses II 1 333 

*Merenptah 1300 

Setill 1266 

*(Pharaoh of the Exodus) 




1233 
1200 

1166 



Twentieth Dyneiity 
Setnecht, Rameses III . 
Rameses 
Rameses 
Rameses 
Rameses 
Rameses 
Rcimeses 
Rameses 
Rameses X 
Rameses XI 
Rameses XII 
Rcuneses XIII 



Twenty-firft DjTiafly 

Herber 1100 

Piankhi 1066 

Pi-net'-em 1033 



1133 



138 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 



Twenty-firS Dyna^- 



Pa-seb-cha-nen I ■ 
Men-cheper-Ra . 
Amen-em-ap-t . 
Pa-seb-cha-nen II 



-Continued 
B.C. 
. . 1000 



Twenty-second Dynaily 

SheshankI 966 

Osorkon I 933 

TakelotI 900 

Osorkon II 866 

Sheshankll 833 

Takelotll 800 

Sheshank III 

Pimai 

Sheshank IV 



Twenty-third Dyna^ 

Pet-lu-Bast 

Osorkon III 



Twenty-fourth Dyna^ 
Bak-en-ren-f 



Twenty-fifth Dynaily 
Shabaka ) 
Shabataka ) 
Taharka 



733 

700 
693 



Twenty-sixth Dynafty 

Psamtek I 

Nekau 

PsEuntek II 



Twenty-sixth Dyna^ — Continued 

B.C. 

Uah-ab-Ra 591 

AJjmesII 572 

Psamtek III 528 

Twenty-seventh Dyna^ 

Cambyses 527 

Darius I 521 

Xerxes I 486 

Artaxerxes 465 

Xerxes II 

Sogdianus 

Darius II 

Twenty-eighth Dyna^ 
Amenrut (Amyrtaeus) . • . 



Twenty-ninth Dyncifly 
Nai-f-aa-u-rut I 



399 



766 Muthes . 
Pa-sa-Mut 



Nai-f-aa-u-rut II 379 

Thirtieth Dyna^ 

Necht-Her-heb 378 

Teher 360 

Necht-neb-f (Nedanebus) . . .358 



Thirty-firft Dyna^ 

Ochus 340 

666 Arses 338 

612 Darius III 336 

596 Conquest by Alexander the Great . 332 



139 



HERE, then, ends Under Egypt's Skies, written by 
Mrs. Lydia Ethel F. Painter, and made into this book by 
Helen Bruneau Van Vechten, at the Philosopher Press 
which is in Wausau, Wisconsin, at the Sign of the 
Green Pine Tree, and finished this fifteenth day of 
November, MCMX. 



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